


Black Ribbons & Pink Lace

by birdtalker_gaywalker



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: A Sex Story, Alley Sex, Alternate Universe - College/University, Anne is a bartender, Bathroom Sex, Bondage, But Mostly Smut, Car Sex, Dirty Talk, Eventual Romance, F/F, Face-Sitting, Finger Sucking, Fuckbuddies, Hair-pulling, Laters Baby, Lesbian Sex, Light Bondage, Masturbation, More Strap-ons, No Seriously That's What The Tags Are For, Oral Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Slow Burn, Smut, Strap-Ons, Tags Are Hard, Tattoos, Thigh-Riding, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Tit-fucking, Tribadism, Vaginal Fingering, a true modern love story, did I mention smut?, falling in love with your fuckbuddy, hnng, if you don't like it don't read it, jk no burn, move those undies outta the way, neckties, obviously this is fiction, pure filth, read the tags, so that happens, the only burn is cock burn, there will be smut in every chapter so help me god
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2020-10-06 06:46:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 49,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20502635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdtalker_gaywalker/pseuds/birdtalker_gaywalker
Summary: Modern AU - the one where Anne Lister & Ann Walker are both college students and neither of them are looking for anything serious. But a chance encounter leads to a random hookup, and suddenly neither Anne nor Ann can get the other off their mind.  The fuckbuddies-to-falling-in-love AU that no one asked for but that I couldn't help but write. You're welcome.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First-time fic writer; please be nice.

The first time they hooked up, it was an accident.

Well, not an accident exactly, but it wasn’t planned. And Ann was used to planning _ everything._

What she didn’t plan was to be balancing on the edge of a barrel, her hands gripping its wood edges, fingers white with tension, while untapped kegs and other beer-filled-barrels littered the storeroom floor around her. And she definitely didn’t expect to have her legs spread wide, her toes tentatively tapping against the calves of the tall bartender standing between her legs. The bartender, this brown-eyed figure whose shoulders are broad, whose forearms are lean and tan, whose fingers are slowly dragging up along the outsides of her thighs right now, and carrying the hem of her skirt along with them.

But it had been a weird day. A weird week— month actually. And so even though she didn’t expect any of it, here she was.

“Wait,” Ann says, putting her hands over the bartender’s to halt their motion.

“What? Is this not okay?”

“No, it’s not that,” Ann assures her.

“We don’t have to—” the bartender starts. But Ann interrupts her before she can finish.

“What’s your name?”

“Oh, yeah— my name. It’s Anne.” It appears they had both forgotten to ask.

“Really? Mine too,” Ann says, and she wonders what the chances were.

“Easy enough to remember.” The bartender, Anne, smiles back at her, and there’s more sincerity on her face than Ann expects in this moment, expects from this interaction, from this stranger standing between her legs in the storeroom of a bar. Ann reaches out and hooks her fingers in to the belt loops of Anne’s trousers and pulls her in until she’s pressed against her body. She untucks Anne’s white collared shirt, letting it fall in front of her hips, and runs her fingers up under it to slide her palms across Anne’s abs. Ann can’t help but let her fingernails scrape down the woman’s stomach, digging in. That’s when she hears Anne take a quick breath in, and that’s when she sees her smile turn into a greedy smirk.

***  
  


_ Go where your feet take you. _ She’s trying to follow the supposedly sage advice from her therapist - he always seems to be throwing those sorts of ridiculous maxims at her. _ That she should go where her feet take her. That she should be present, live in the moment, say what she means and mean what she says. _ So just this once, she did go where her feet took her; they took her ten blocks past campus, ten blocks away from where she had run into the ex that she broke up with just a month ago. Ten blocks away into a random bar, in the middle of the afternoon, on a Wednesday. 

A random bar with only two other people in it, it seems. Well, three. The bartender. The bartender, a slim woman of around Ann’s age, who is currently leaning against the wall, scribbling furiously into what looks like a tiny journal. She looks up from her book to Ann, then closes it and slides it into her back pocket. She crosses her arms in front of her body and continues watching Ann with piercing brown eyes while Ann meanders to a barstool and sits down. Like everything in this bar, the bartender is both steampunk and preppy, and for such an unusual mix it’s oddly captivating. Her crisp white button down is tucked neatly into her dark pants, her sleeves are rolled up past her elbows, and a black vest is buttoned across her stomach. Her hair is tied back, low and in a ponytail, and she has small gauges in her ears — the kind you can see through, but not any bigger than a straw.

“What would you like, Miss?” For someone with such a handsome appearance, her voice sounds gentle and rather ladylike.

“Umm, do you have a favorite? Something you’d recommend, I mean?” Ann asks. She isn’t prepared for this question even though she should have seen it coming given the place that she wandered into.

“I doubt you’d like my favorite, Miss,” the bartender says cooly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ann counters, and she realizes it came out louder than she meant it to.

“I only meant that you don’t strike me as a whiskey drinker.” 

“Oh, because I suppose girls like me could never like whiskey?” Ann barks back at her. _ Jeez, Ann, _ she thinks to herself. She was hoping the mile-long walk out of campus was going to cool her off, not rile her up more. But before she can apologize for jumping down the bartender’s throat, she sees the woman turn around and approach a display of liquor bottles behind her. She grabs one dark bottle, then another, mixing together some sort of concoction and then pouring most of it into one highball glass. The remainder she pours into a shot glass.

She slides the highball across to Ann and lifts the shot glass in front of herself. 

“Cheers.”

“Are you allowed to drink on the job?” Ann asks.

“Not technically. But my aunt owns the bar. And a little one won’t hurt me.” She winks at Ann as she takes a small sip from the shot glass. “It’s a Manhattan by the way,” Anne explains.

“Oh,” Ann replies. She takes a gulp and winces as it goes down.

“Splendid,” Anne says with a touch of sarcasm. “Besides, I’m loath to let such a pretty girl drink by herself in the middle of the day.” 

“Is that what I am? Just a pretty face?” Ann roars back at her, feeling herself get worked up more than she knows she should be. _ It’s not her fault, _ Ann thinks, but she can’t help the fact that her blood has been boiling since the second she stormed off campus, away from _ her. _

“Miss, I didn’t mean to—”

“Everyone treats me like that, like some pretty plaything with no brain, with no spine, like I’m some kind of _ invalid.” _

“You don’t look very invalid to me.” Anne says through her teeth.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to jump down your throat,” Ann apologizes after a minute.

“Just as well; I shouldn’t assume that girls who are beautiful can’t drink whiskey drinks.”

Ann lets out an exasperated sigh. _ I can’t drink whiskey drinks; you’re not wrong, _ she wants to say, but instead she just says, “Everyone treats me like I’m _ fragile,”_ and the disdain for the word is evident by her tone.

Anne puts her elbows on the bar, leaning her upper body over it and imposing into Ann’s space. She looks right in the blue eyes of the young blonde woman sitting in front of her — it’s here when she finally notices the freckles that streak across her face, over the bridge of her nose and how they disappear along the apple of her cheeks. Her features are soft, but Anne can see she’s got a spark in her somewhere. 

So Anne peers into those deep blue eyes and asks, _ “Are _ you fragile?” 

Ann coughs on her drink. “I don’t think so,” she replies unconvincingly. 

Anne cocks her head and purses her lips.

“What?” Ann asks.

“You must do better than that, Miss.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have to actually believe it yourself before you’ll convince anyone else,” Anne explains, “That you’re not fragile, you know.”

Ann lets the words marinate. She wants to believe it, but her body betrays her and she slumps down in her chair. She doesn’t know how to convince people. Of anything really.

She looks up to the bartender’s face. It’s surprisingly kind, and for whatever reason, she feels like she can tell her things. Things about herself. But ten seconds go by, and then another, and Ann hasn’t said anything else. She’s lost her courage — well, whatever courage she had to begin with. 

Anne steps away from her to go check on the other patrons at the bar: a middle aged man and woman, sitting close to each other on their bar stools, hovering over a phone, and giggling into each other’s faces.

Ann pulls her phone out of her pocket and starts thumbing through Instagram. It’s doing nothing to lift her spirits. After a few minutes she feels eyes on her and finds Anne leant up against the wall again, arms crossed in front of her body and one knee bent, her shoe flat against the surface of the wall. She’s holding a pen in her mouth like a cigar, clenching it between her teeth.

“Stop that.” Ann hisses at her.

“Stop what?”

“You’re .... studying me.”

“Well, I can see you’re holding something back.” Anne teases.

“I—” The blonde woman starts to defend herself, but she deflates. “You don’t know me,” she says, and it’s almost more directed to herself than to the bartender.

“Yup, I don’t. So it’s no skin off my back if your friends keep treating you like shit.”

“Thanks for that.” Ann retorts as she takes another swig of her drink.

“Whatever this bitch mood is that you’ve got going, you don’t need to direct it at me. I find it hard to believe that I’m what you’re actually angry about when you’ve been in here for all of ten minutes.”

“Um—” Ann’s almost surprised that this bartender even notices that she’s angry. Most people are just dismissive; her family members rarely even acknowledge her presence.

Anne takes several steps away away from Ann, but then she turns and comes out from behind the bar. She sits down on the stool next to Ann, puts her thumb on chin and tilts it up, forcing Ann to look right into her eyes.

“If you want to be taken seriously then I think it would behoove you to remember that the only person one can control is oneself.”

“You’re right,” Ann says slowly in response. She finds it strange that this bartender has one hand to her face, and stranger still that she finds her touch so calming. 

“And I’m not angry at you.” Ann puts her hand over where Anne’s rests on the edge of her chin and slowly pulls it away from her face.

“You’re angry at someone.” Anne says, but Ann’s gaze has followed their hands, still joined, down toward the bar top. She puts her hand back in her lap when the words finally sink in.

“I’m angry at a lot of people, but I’m me so I never tell them,” Ann confesses.

“Then tell me,” Anne says. Ann just looks at her, unconvinced, but Anne follows with a quiet “hmmm?” and some part of Ann feels like it might actually be good to get it out. 

“It’s just— well, my cousins. They always think they know what’s best for me when they know nothing about me. And my sister— she married this total asshole and ran off to the Midwest. So I’m mad that she left me here to fend for myself.” Ann straightens up in her chair as the sentences start to flow out of her.

“I’m angry at my friends for always pushing me around. Or thinking that I’m ‘just being emotional’ because my parents died.” 

“Shit,” Anne says, and Ann realizes she must sound sort of cavalier about having dead parents, but she presses on anyway. It feels sort of good to tell someone else the things she’s been bottling up.

“Yeah, and I’m mad at my parents for dying and leaving me in charge of their estate when I was barely even 18, and for making me grow up with my aunt who keeps trying to force all these eligible young bachelors on me and charity events and junk like that because that’s what she did.” Ann stands up out of her chair.

“Well it’s not what I want!” Ann exclaims.

“Good! Let it all out,” Anne coaxes and she slams her hand on the bar top. 

“And I’m mad at my ex. That—” Ann clenches her fists and squishes her lips against each other, “shitbag never listened to me. Not ever.”

“With what?” Anne asks.

“Oh, let me tell you ‘bout my ex. _ My ex _ kept wanting us to get married even though I’m not even finished with college. My ex asked my aunt for a family heirloom ring to propose with even though I told my aunt no, and I told my ex no, and I told everyone fucking no. _ And my ex— _I don’t even know if my stupid ex ever really loved me or just saw dollar signs in my eyes.” See sees Anne’s eyebrows turn inward, as if to question her, and quickly adds, “my family is rich.”

“Ahh.”

“And we should have broken up,” Ann continues, basically shouting at this point. “I should have dumped that asshat months ago! I should have and then — then I could have been with someone who actually wanted to fuck me!” The words leap out of her mouth before she can stop them. Ann feels the color start to drain from her face.

“Wait, wait” Anne interjects as she rises from her chair. “Are you telling me you two _ never _ had sex? Please, god, tell me you did.”

“No— What? I mean yes, we did.” _ Good lord, how did we get onto this, _Ann thinks to herself.

“Ok good because I was gonna have to—”

“It just wasn’t, umm—”

“Kick his ass—”

“Fucking.” They respond simultaneously with each other, so it takes a second for each of them to hear what the other said.

“What?” 

“Huh?”

“Whose ass?” Ann asks.

“Your boyfriend,” Anne replies. “Well, ex boyfriend.”

“No. _ Girl _ friend, ex- _ girlfriend,” _ Ann clarifies. _ Girls. I said I like girls, right? _

“Oh.” Anne says it flatly, and Ann can’t tell whether the admission has any effect on her at all.

“So,” Anne continues, “your ex girlfriend had sex with you but never _ fucked _you?”

Now that Ann’s faced with it, she can’t actually believe she said any of it out loud. To a stranger.

“That _ is _ what I said, isn’t it?” Ann mutters, looking down to the floor. 

“Sounds like it was her loss.”

The words have barely left Anne’s lips when Ann feels a rush of warmth spread through her body. The heat is making its way to her fingertips when she finally looks up and meets Anne’s eyes, and immediately her self-doubt infests her thoughts once more.

“Was it?” She says it mostly to herself. But Anne hears it and scoffs. 

“Yeah, definitely,” Anne counters without hesitation. 

“I thought maybe it was just me.”

“I highly doubt that.” There’s a bit of a chuckle in Anne’s voice that Ann doesn’t know how to interpret.

“Why do you say that?” Ann isn’t trying to be playful or coy; she’s honestly surprised to hear what this bartender seems to be saying— that maybe she _ wasn’t _the problem. 

“Because you’re— because anyone would be lucky to—” Anne looks like she can’t find the right words. She’s just there, stammering and making gestures at Ann’s body, and looking her up and down. Then she stops talking, as if she didn’t just cut herself off before finishing the thought.

“Lucky to what?” Ann asks. _ Could she honestly mean—? _

“Nothing. Never mind.”

Anne turns to go give their bill to the only other people in the bar. It’s then that Ann notices how her hair is pulled back in a low pony: not with a ponytail, but with a little black ribbon like some sort of colonial gentleman. It’s odd, but intriguing.

She tries to change the story, lighten the mood when Anne comes back. She’s still outside of the bar rather than behind it, straightening up the barstools on either side of Ann. 

“Well what about you, what’s your story?”

“No story.” Anne says plainly.

“Well, you work at a bar?”

“Obviously.” Anne motions around her as she says it. 

“And you go to university?”

“Yes.” Anne isn’t making this any easier with her one-word answers.

“What year are you?”

“5th.”

“Victory lap?” Ann inquires, although she feels like this girl probably isn’t the type to stay on campus for an extra year just to party and play around. 

“No I’m actually finishing my masters,” Anne explains. 

“It’s only a year program?”

“I completed undergrad early.” Anne tilts her head up just slightly when she says it, like she’s proud of herself, but like she’d never actually say it out loud.

Ann lets herself sound as impressed as possible when she replies, “Ohh, wow- that’s great.” 

Anne looks at her for a second or two, waiting to see if she has any other questions for her. But Ann is momentarily halted by the way the brunette’s eyes flicker over her body, the way they seem to pause over her collarbones, her jaw, her lips, and Ann can’t help but wonder whether her fingers would do the same. 

“Hmmm?” Ann is snapped out of her daydream when she hears the bartender’s inquisitive hmmm, asking if she’s done with her relentless questioning. 

Without thinking it through Ann sputters out, “Why do you wear a ribbon in your hair?”

The taller woman furrows her brow. “Why shouldn’t I?” Anne touches the black ribbon in her hair, running her long ponytail full of straight brown hair through the circle of her thumb and pointer finger.

“You strike me more as a rubber band type of person,” Ann stammers.

“It’s habit I suppose,” Anne tells her. “My long hair sort of drives me crazy but I’ve always worn the ribbons. And they come out much easier, without much fuss, you know.”

“If you don’t like long hair why have it in the first place?” _ What is it about this ponytail, Ann? Get a grip on yourself, _Ann chides herself. But she can’t stop the questions from pouring out of her.

“I have my reasons,” Anne teases.

“Well what are they?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I’d like to know,” Ann states as firmly as she can without sounding demanding.

Anne stops her fidgeting around the outside of the bar and steps back into Ann’s personal space. She lowers herself down by her knees to match Ann’s eye level and puts her face so close to Ann’s that Ann can feel warm breath on her skin. 

“Would you?” Anne drawls, and to Ann, it almost sounds . . . _ flirtatious._

Ann gathers her confidence. “Tell me,” she says directly, and then she follows it with a weak “Please.”

Anne leans in even further, and Ann feels her stomach drop because it feels for a split second like Anne is moving in to kiss her. But she passes Ann’s face and her breath tickles the skin on Ann’s ear when she says: “Because girls like to have something to hold onto.” 

Ann furrows her brow, trying to get the meaning. Anne pulls back and picks up one of Ann’s hands out of her lap. She cups it in her own and stretches it behind her head, pressing Ann’s thin fingers into her hair and clasping them around her ponytail. She looks right into Ann’s eyes and Ann sees the brief flicker of a smile. 

“And because I rather enjoy having it _ pulled.” _ She squeezes Ann’s hand and draws it back when she says “pulled,” causing Ann’s hand to tug on her ponytail, forcing her neck back and _ demonstrating. _ Ann feels her insides start to churn at the bartender’s fingers tightening around her own, at the way Anne exposes her neck, at the subtle look of _ pleasure _ on Anne’s face with Ann’s fist around her ponytail. Anne blinks her eyes at Ann and walks away to go cash out the other patrons.

After a few minutes, the other couple in the bar leave. When Anne walks out from behind the bar once more to clean their bar section with a rag, Ann walks up behind her. And when Anne flips around, the two women are face to face again, Anne hovering about 2 inches above the smaller girl.

“What were you going to say a minute ago?” Ann asks.

“I don’t remember.”

“Tell me.” Ann is mustering every bit of strength to sound as demanding as possible.

“Look at you, you’re already acting less fragile than when you came in here.”

“Tell me,” Ann says again. But it’s not a command, it’s a plea.

“All I was going to say is that you should date someone who does _ anything _ you tell them to. _ Everything _ you tell them to. And _ then _ some.” Anne’s eyes don’t look anywhere but at Ann, and the intensity behind them makes Ann feel like her knees might buckle underneath her.

“Is that what you would do?” 

“I don’t really date.”

“But you would fuck me however I asked you to, wouldn’t you?” Ann’s direct question startles them both. 

Ann sees a myriad emotions wash over Anne’s face. At first she looks flattered, or impressed. Then Ann thinks she might think she’s crazy for such an inquiry. But then Anne looks around the bar, sort of toward the ceiling and at nothing in particular. Ann sees her brows scrunch together. _ It’s not a test,_ Ann wants to shout at her, but then Anne is looking back at the smaller girl with bright eyes. Eyes with a flash of desire, with a hint of cockiness, and Anne brings one hand up to her face, running her fingers across her lips and chin as though she’s debating how to answer this.

Ann would be lying if she said she didn’t like seeing Anne’s hands up close. She’d been watching them— how they’d poured their drinks, the way they looked cupped around her little shot glass, the way they bent and moved when she circled the rag around on the bar top. But now, seeing them press against the skin of Anne’s face and touch her pink lips, Ann can’t help the familiar sensation that stirs between her legs. _ She’s making me wet. _

She wishes she was forward enough to say it, but the words won’t escape her lips. So instead Ann just swallows— gulps really, since her throat is now bone dry despite the whiskey drink she’s been nursing, and she feels her collarbones twitch, hoping they’ll speak in ways her mouth won’t.

Finally Anne says, “I suppose— I mean, I aim to please.”

“Prove it,” Ann challenges before her brain can stop her. 

“You’re serious?” 

Ann just nods. She feels her breathing start to become more rapid, and she notices that Anne is watching her collarbones, staring at the rise and fall of her chest.

Anne looks up briefly when she says, “why?“

“Because—” she’s got no good reason. “Because I’m an adult! And because everything when it comes to me is my decision.”

“Ok. Well why me?” Anne counters. 

“Because you’ve got kind eyes.” Ann realizes it probably sounds like a stupid reason. But she has nothing to lose at this point, so she says quietly, “and I like your hands.”

Anne smirks. Then she says, “Yes, but—”

“But what? Do you not think I’m—?“

“No, good lord, that’s not it at all,” Anne corrects her. “You’re stunning. It’s just that—”

“What?“

“Well you have to admit, this is crazy,” Anne says.

“Crazy? Crazy is me only ever having sex in a bed,” Ann starts. “Crazy is only ever _ making love _” — she shudders when she says it— “only ever with the lights off and in the same position and nowhere other than the bed. FOR TWO YEARS.”

“Two years?” Anne questions.

“Two years,” Ann states and suddenly she can’t stop herself from continuing. “Crazy is me begging to be taken up against a wall, or on a counter top. Or with my clothes still on. And _ nothing.”_

“Begging?” Anne seems in disbelief of this whole conversation. Or maybe in disbelief of _ something else. _

“Begging,” Ann growls. 

“For two years?”

“Yup.”

“You begged for two years to get fucked by your girlfriend and nothing?” Anne asks and her questions are coming more quickly now.

“Yup,” Ann replies. 

“And before the ex there was?”

“No one,” Ann says, and she doesn’t have time to be embarrassed because Anne asks,

“So you’ve never been…?”

“Only ever in a bed.”

“I can’t bel—” Anne starts. And Ann sees something in her demeanor shift. She takes a step closer into Ann. “Well that just won’t do.”

“So you’ll?”

“Two years is much too long to be begging.”

“You have no idea,” Ann breathes.

“So you want me to?”

“Please,” Ann says.

“I won’t make you beg that long,” Anne replies, and her voice now sounds an octave lower.

She turns away from Ann to walk briskly to the open door and quickly picks up a piece of chalk. She scribbles something on a small chalkboard, and Ann doesn’t catch what it says before Anne is closing the door and locking it from the inside.

“They can wait,” she says, picking Ann’s hand up and interlacing their fingers. She starts moving them toward a hallway behind the bar in the direction of the bathrooms, and once they’ve rounded the corner she pulls Ann in front of her and pauses, just breathing deep breaths in and out and looking over Ann’s small frame.

“Can I put my hands on you?”

Ann breathes out a “yes” and before she has time to worry whether it sounds too desperate, Anne is gripping her hips and stepping closer to her, moving her hands toward Ann’s lower back. Ann’s breath catches when palms glide down across her ass, and then when Anne’s strong hands grip the backs of her thighs and lift her off the ground, Ann instinctively wraps her legs around Anne’s sturdy form.

Sparks ignite in her body everywhere she feels her skin press against Anne’s clothes. The inside of her thighs against the small of the other woman’s waist, the backs of her knees, tops of her calves against Anne’s back. She feels a familiar ache between her legs where the base of her body presses against the shirt covering Anne’s flat stomach.

Anne doesn’t seem to struggle to carry Ann the rest of the way down the hallway and Ann wonders if her body will look as muscular as it feels once she gets the button-down shirt off of her. Anne walks them into the store room and kicks the door shut behind her with her heel.

****

When Ann’s fingers scratch down Anne’s torso, over her abdomen, Ann feels Anne hold her breath.

“Ann, this is crazy,” she says.

“I know.” 

They haven’t even kissed yet, they’re just palming, grazing, dragging fingers across each other’s bodies, pressing their cheeks against each other’s. But it’s already addicting, and Ann doesn’t think she’s ever wanted, needed another person so badly.

Anne brings her fingers up to Ann’s face, gliding her thumb across Ann’s bottom lip, and pressing behind Ann’s chin where her other fingers come to rest. Ann couldn’t stop this now even if she wanted to, but there’s no part of her that wants to stop.

“I don’t care,” Ann says.

“Me neither,” Anne says. 

Ann pushes her fingers all the way down past Anne’s belly button, until they’re tucked into the top of Anne’s pants, and she pulls Anne by the waistband the rest of the way into her body just as Anne brings their faces together.

Anne’s lips taste like whiskey; they’re wet and hungry and Ann feels like she might be swallowed up whole. Ann unbuttons Anne’s top button and unzips her fly, flinging the top of the pants apart as much as they’ll go. She moves her hands back up Anne’s front side and starts frantically unbuttoning her shirt, exhaling into Anne’s mouth when she finally gets the damn thing open. Ann pulls away from their kiss to look at her body, navy boxer briefs peeking out from the unzipped pants with little flashes of color patterned over them. _ Are those racecars? _Ann thinks to herself, before gazing up at Anne’s abs which look just as good as they feel, and her light gray sports bra covering her tan skin. She’s got little beads of sweat just above it at the curve of her chest, and Ann can’t help but wonder what shape she takes under it.

Anne draws her back in, kissing her and nipping at her mouth, taking her bottom lip in between her teeth, and she continues to grab at her legs, her ass with her hands all the while bunching Ann’s skirt up little by little with dexterous fingers. Finally when it’s all the way up, Anne pulls her face back and looks down. Ann sees the edges of her lips curl up, and she looks down at herself, her pink lace panties exposed and revealing a growing wet spot. She’d be embarrassed but the look on Anne’s face makes her feel like it’s exactly what she was hoping to see.

“Mmmmm.” The sound of her utter delight gives Ann goosebumps all over.

“Tell me what you want,” Anne says, her voice low, and she licks her lips while she waits for Ann to answer.

“Fingers. I want— your fingers.” Ann gets it out through ragged breaths. 

Anne nods and tilts her head to the side as she says, “May I?” She’s playful, cocky, and Ann can’t answer “please” fast enough.”

Ann’s entire body quakes as she feels Anne pull down her lace undies, letting them fall and settle just before her knees. Anne touches the inside of her thigh, the crease where her legs meet her pubic bone. “Spread your legs for me,” she whispers, and Ann follows her direction without hesitation.

She glides her fingers through Ann’s wetness, collecting it and pressing against her entrance. She swirls her fingers around, up to Ann’s clit, teasing and toying with her through slippery motions.

“Next time give me some notice and I’ll have more than just fingers ready,” Anne teases into Ann’s ear. She bites Ann’s earlobe as she presses into her with one finger and Ann arches her back. She reaches out and grabs Anne’s shoulders, holding on to her as Anne eases out of her and then back in. Then Anne is driving in and out of her at a steady slow pace, little “mmmms” escaping from her every time Ann takes her in. And Ann tries to stifle her own moans, clenching her mouth closed but emitting quiet grunts anyway.

“You don’t need to be quiet,” Anne says, “I like hearing you.” She grips Ann’s hip with tight fingers and a groan immediately falls out of Ann’s mouth. She feels Anne smile against her lips, obviously pleased with the effect she’s having on Ann.

“Will you—” Ann groans in between ragged breaths.

“What is it?”

“Could you-“

“More fingers?” 

“No- well yes, but”

“What, Ann?”

“Keep, like— keep talking.”

“Mmmmm,” Ann groans out, and the corners of her lips turn up.

Anne moves her left hand from Ann’s hip to where Ann’s ass meets the wooden barrel. She grabs at her, pulls her toward herself, giving herself the leverage to get as deep as possible into the core of the woman perched in front of her. 

“Is this what you wanted?” Anne asks as she begins to pump, hard, into her.

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“You want another finger?” She rubs Ann’s clit with her thumb, softly, but in tandem with the movement of her hand.

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“I want to hear you say it,” Anne says, her voice low and husky.

“I want -” Anne drives into her.

“More -” She pulls out.

“Fingers.” She exhales it as Anne presses back into her, this time with a second finger, and Ann whimpers at the stretch.

“Good girl.”

“Ohhhhhh,” Ann moans out, almost unable to catch her breath. 

Their upper bodies are pressed together, and Ann slides her hands down from where they grip Anne’s shoulders to press her palms against Anne’s collarbones, gently pushing her back.

“What is it? Is this not-“ Anne immediately asks when Ann has separated their upper bodies.

“No, don’t stop,” Ann exhales, and she quickly returns her palms to Anne’s shoulders, this time tucking them under the fabric of the shirt that hangs loosely open over her frame. She sinks her fingernails into the skin just around the edges of her sports bra, digging them into flesh in slow pulses as if asking Anne to resume her pace. “It’s good, it’s good,” Ann encourages her, and Anne’s fingers find the rhythm again. 

Ann looks down to where Anne’s hand disappears under where her dress is hiked up around her hips. “It’s just- can I see you?” With her body curved forward, she tries, and fails, to catch a glimpse. 

“Ohh.” Anne’s greedy smirk returns to her face, even wider this time. She keeps fucking her, in and out, in and out, and with her other hand she pushes Ann’s dress up, slowly, drawing out the reveal like she’s unwrapping a present. Finally Ann can see where their bodies are connected, can see the way Anne’s long digits pull out of her, covered with wetness she couldn’t help but make, can see the way her own body offers little resistance to those fingers pounding back into her core, pink and throbbing for more.

“You want to see me take you like this?”

“Mmmm-hmm.”

“You want to see how well you take my fingers?”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“You want to see how good you look with me inside you?”

“Ohhhh.” Ann’s chest is heaving up and down with the rhythm of Anne’s hand.

“Is this what you wanted, baby?”

“Mmmm.” Ann takes her hands off of Anne’s shoulders and grips the sides of the barrel again.

“I want to feel you come, baby.”

“Mmmmm.” Ann leans back, nodding her head to let Anne know that she’s close.

“You feel so good. You’re so tight, Ann.” Anne leans into her, and plants her free hand against the wall for balance.

“Ohh, I-.” Ann spreads her legs as far wide on the barrel as she can. 

“How does it feel to finally be _ fucked, _ Ann?”

“Kiss me,” Ann blurts out, and Anne must know that she’s _ there, _ must feel her insides start to quiver and twitch because she kisses Ann with passion and pumps into her faster, using her entire arm. Ann clamps her eyes shut and she grips Anne’s wrist to keep her fingers pressed as deep into her as possible, before finally letting out one last “ohhhh” and arching her back.

She opens one eye and then the other, slowly, embarrassingly, looking at Anne’s face.

There’s a stupid grin on the bartender’s face and Ann sees her wipe her fingers against the bar towel hanging out of her back pocket. Ann covers her eyes with the back of her hand. If only it made her invisible. Anne brings her face towards her and peers at Ann from where she hides behind her hand, slowly peeling it away from her eyes. And Ann doesn’t know how to interpret the look on her face; it’s just watching her, _ regarding her. _

“I’m so . . .” Ann doesn’t know how to finish.

“Spent?” Anne asks.

“Sorry?” It’s more of a question than an actual apology.

“Why sorry?!”

“That was — I’m not usually. . .” Ann trails off again, and re-covers her face with her hands. “So vocal,” she finishes quietly from behind her shield.

“I liked it.” Anne whispers into her ear. “You’re hot.” Ann looks at her with disbelief in her eyes.

“I mean, you’re also really beautiful. But yes. Hot.”

“Really?” Ann’s never been called that before.

“Ridiculously so.” Ann is embarrassed again. She feels her face which was probably red from the intensity of her climax turn to white or possibly to pale pink, the reality of what she just did - the reality of this whole situation - finally starting to hit her. 

But that’s when Anne says, “I’d prove it but I should probably open the bar back up.”

“What do you mean?” Ann inquires, and Anne motions to her pants, then winks. Ann furrows her brow. Anne takes one of Ann’s hands, shimmies it into where the top of her pants are still open, and places it against the bottom of her cotton boxer briefs. They’re drenched. She watches Ann’s face register what it means, then turn a new shade of pink. Ann bites her bottom lip, clearly impressed with herself.

“Told you,” Anne says, lifting Ann’s hand out and zipping herself up.

“Can I—”

“Next time.” And Anne kisses Ann’s hand, sweetly, before lifting her off the barrel and walking them both out of the storeroom.

And all Ann can think about is how she hopes to God there’s a next time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was supposed to be just a one-time-thing. But Anne can't stop having flashes. Distracting flashes.

The fact was, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Normally, this kind of thing wouldn’t bother her. She’d be alright, letting a little slip of a thing like Ann walk out her door and never seeing her again. But she kept having flashes. _ Distracting _ flashes. 

Ann’s ass pressed against the edge of the barrel, pale skin red where the wood was digging in.

Ann’s moans husking in her ear as she asked Ann if she wanted another finger inside of her.

Ann’s toes digging into her calves as her back arched and she came around Anne’s fingers.

Anne blinked the last memory away, though it was close enough that she could practically feel, hear, smell (god how she wanted to taste) it right in front of her. Her fingers ran over a torn receipt on which Ann’s number was quickly jotted down before she had slipped back on to the street that day, her dress whisking behind her like a promise of things to come.

Anne pulls her phone out and punches the number in. She had been wet every day since fucking Ann over that barrel, and her mind wasn’t giving her respite. _ One more time, _ then she could let this one slip away and get back into her daily routine without the distraction of Ann (last name unknown)’s orgasm ringing in her ears.

_ I’ve been thinking about you. _

Before she can get the phone in her pocket again, she feels the familiar double vibration of a text.

_ Where do you want to meet? _

Anne ponders this a moment, sliding her index finger up the side of the phone and flicking it off the top as she considers the question. Not at her place – she doesn’t need this girl to know where she lives. Not back at the bar – she needs to get her out of her head, not further cemented there. Not at her place – fucking in her bed just defeats the purpose.

_ Ah. _

Anne’s thumbs rapidly tap a location and a time into the text box and hit send before she glances around the bar. Only a few patrons left, as the night is drawing to a close. Thankfully, she’ll only have to wait an hour or two and then she’ll be free to chase this daydream down and make it reality: once and for all.

*****

The college campus isn’t far from her bar, and after locking up it’s a short walk to get there. Cool fall air cuts through the linen of her gray button down shirt easily, but it feels crisp and refreshing after the stale air of the bar. She plucks her phone out of the front of the tight vest covering most of her torso and checks the time: 25 minutes since she left the bar and she can see her destination.

As she saunters up to the entrance of the old amphitheater, crammed between 3 buildings on the giant college campus, she’s impressed with the stillness of the night. Despite school being fully in session, there isn’t a soul in sight at 2am, here under the gaze of only the moon and a few birds.

And then something catches her eye: a glimmer of movement low in the corner of the small theatre. A dress fluttering in the breeze, and Ann is standing there silently, simply watching her. Anne feels something in her catch, like a nail on fabric, and attributes it to anticipation. She strides easily down the stairs towards Ann and is next to her in moments, invading her personal space so easily that it feels like they’ve done this a thousand times already.

“Well, then.” Anne murmurs, her face close enough to Ann’s that she can feel a small puff of air escape her, “here we are again.”

“Yes.” Ann says simply, bringing a hand up and running it along the lapel of Anne’s vest, toying with it just a little. Her other hand mirrors the motion on the other side of the vest’s collar as she steps slightly closer, their bodies a hair’s breadth away from one another.

“May I?” Anne asks, dipping her head slightly, bending her knees and closing the gap in their height so she can look into Ann’s eyes. She’s met with a bright blue gaze and wide dark pupils and Ann nods, one hand making a fist on Anne’s vest and the other slipping into Anne’s hair and digging into the back of her skull with her nails.

Something in Anne breaks as Ann tilts her face towards Anne’s mouth, her eyes locked on Anne’s lips. She pushes forward, her lips sliding against Ann’s with a fervor, weeks of anticipation built into this moment. Instantly her hands are everywhere, sliding up Ann’s thighs, cupping her ass, sliding easily into the deep V of her dress’ cleavage to feel the warmth of her breasts.

“C’mere.” Ann breathes against her lips, hooking a hand into the front of Anne’s vest and pulling her towards the stone stairs leading to the stage of the theatre. They’re tucked into an alcove, not readily visible, not that there would be anyone to see them at this hour anyway. Nonetheless, the idea of what Ann seems to want to do sends a rush of goosebumps over Anne’s skin.

And creates a brief thought that maybe she won’t be getting Ann out of her mind any time soon.

“Here, is this OK?” Ann asks, and suddenly Anne realizes that less-bold Ann has returned, a hint of insecurity flashing across her eyes as the gravity of what they’re about to do slips across her face.

“Yeah, here is good. Here is hot. I’m into this.” Anne returns quickly, a wolfish grin spreading across her face as she steps right back into Ann’s space, pushing her gently but quickly down onto the stairs.

“What do you want to do to me?” Ann asks, and Anne is not ready for this question because spread out before her like a fucking snack is Ann, her short flowy dress ruffled up and already disheveled, part of her bra peeking out where Anne had her hand inside of it. Her gaze is drawn instantly down to where Ann’s legs are partly spread, the dress falling between them as she leans back on the stairs and looks up at Ann with hooded eyes.

“Oh, I have some ideas,” Anne whispers, sliding up Ann’s body, both hands moving up her knees and bunching up her dress until she can see – oh _fuck_ – the girl isn’t wearing any underwear. “Can I touch you?” Anne asks immediately, her voice gravelly as she kneels on the step below Ann, eyes taking in her slick arousal. She can smell Ann already, the heady scent making its way out from between Ann’s spread legs and right up to her face, instantly causing her mouth to water in a visceral reaction.

_ "Yes" _ Ann breathes out, “please. . .” the night air catching her words and wicking them away as she grabs Anne’s hand and pulls it higher.

Anne takes two fingers and dips them into Ann’s heat, moaning softly at the arousal already there for her. She’s so soft and wet, just waiting to be fucked. Anne moves her fingers up and down, stroking softly – so fucking softly – and Ann groans insistently.

“Baby, _ please." _ The words lick their way through Anne’s head, slithering into her belly and sending a throb of wetness right into her boxers. Hearing Ann call her baby unhinges her, and she’s suddenly overtaken by an urge to just consume Ann’s pussy for hours without stopping, letting the smell linger on her face and fingers for days.

But the tease would be _ so _ much better than giving in...for now.

“You want my fingers?” Anne asks, swiping her fingers across Ann’s entrance briefly before moving back up to spread her wetness over her clit, rubbing circles there and sliding back down, smirking as Ann’s pussy twitches in frustration at the constant tease. 

“Yes.” Ann gasps, rutting her hips up into Anne’s touch. Anne grips her hips hard in retaliation, stilling her attempts to seat herself on Anne’s fingers.

“What about my mouth?” Anne taunts, an impish grin on her face as Ann’s head snaps up, looking straight in her eyes.

“Will you?” she responds instantly, and Anne smirks up at her, hovering above her soaking pussy.

“Will I what?” Anne quips, kissing the neat and closely trimmed patch of hair leading down to Ann’s wetness before dragging her tongue along the crease of her thigh, stopping short when she spots a small tattoo, right there on her hip bone. A perfect, impeccably detailed peony adorns Ann’s pale skin in black and gray and beneath it in a delicate script _ Paeoniaceae _ is written. Anne can’t help but nip at it, and as soon as she does, a gasp erupts from above her.

_ How is this girl so fucking hot? _

“Lick me?” Ann asks, tentative, blushing. Anne moans softly as Ann’s fingers work their way into her hair, tugging gently and guiding her towards Ann’s center.

Dipping her head, Anne parts Ann and runs her tongue along her innermost lips, savoring the sweet and musky flavor she had been craving. Instantly Ann starts writhing, moans ripping through the night air in quick succession. Anne glides a hand up Ann’s abdomen and brushes the hardened nipple straining through the thin fabric of her dress before rubbing her thumb over it. Ann slings a leg over Anne’s shoulder, pulling her in even closer.

Moving her hand from Ann’s hip, Anne slips it up between Ann’s legs, tongue rubbing circles around her clit as she slides two fingers inside of Ann. Ann grabs her ponytail and pulls her harder against her, gasping her name and grinding her hips down onto Anne’s face. Anne knows she is _ so fucking wet; _ this woman is _ undoing _ her as she fucks her on the stairs in the cool night air and nothing about this makes her think it will stop any time soon.

“Oh – _ God!" _ Ann pants between breaths. Her hips roll into Anne’s face as Anne thrusts into her, fingers curling as she seeks out the spot inside Ann that will set her on fire. Anne can feel Ann twitching around her, starting to come undone. She leaves Ann’s clit, dipping down to where her fingers thrust in and out and lapping at the wetness dripping from her. She can’t stand the idea of it being over so soon, and despite Ann’s cry of protest, she drinks in her flavor, licking, tonguing at her while she thrusts into her over and over.

“Anne –”

“I know, baby.” Anne husks against her heat, lips swollen with effort and desire. She looks up to find Ann staring at her intently, pupils dilated with arousal, desperate for Anne.

“I need you,” she whimpers, not breaking Anne’s gaze as Anne moves back to her clit, sucking it between her lips and massaging it with her tongue. After a few more thrusts, Ann arches against her, moaning her name like a prayer but refusing to break eye contact as she comes, watching as Anne eats her out without stopping. Ann slumps against the stone and tugs Anne’s ponytail to bring her closer. Anne feels Ann’s other hand on her wrist, pulling her fingers out of Ann’s center and bringing them up to her face. Ann pauses, waits until Anne finds her eyes, and then sucks Anne’s moist fingers into her mouth and licks them clean.

“Jesus, fuck…” Anne mutters under her breath, leaning in and kissing Ann hard. She can feel Ann lapping at her face, cleaning her wetness off of Anne’s lips and chin. Anne feels her own core pound with arousal, every hair on her body standing on edge and her heart on the verge of exploding out of her chest with need. Through the kiss, she feels Ann’s hands on her shirt, ripping it from her belt and then unbuttoning it with urgency and slipping the pant button loose from its home. 

“I want to make you come.” Ann whispers, biting down on Anne’s bottom lip, slowly dragging the zipper of her pants down, tooth by tooth.

“Then do it.” Anne challenges, a growl in her throat at the thought of Ann’s long, delicate fingers finding their way into her soaked underwear. Her arms are propped up on either side of Ann’s head, and she straddles one of Ann’s legs, her knees resting on the hard stone stairs as she waits for Ann to take action. Ann pulls her in for another bruising kiss, yanking her hair hard while simultaneously slipping a hand down her abs and into her underwear.

“You’re so _ wet." _ Ann purrs, immediately turning red but forging ahead and sliding her fingers through Anne’s folds. Anne sighs at the sensation, groaning softly as Ann brings her wetness to her clit, using the slickness to rub there. Ann sets up a tempo that’s so fucking good, just rubbing, a tease of being not _ quite _ fast enough but just enough to make her hiss and bite hard on Ann’s neck.

“Faster.” Anne grunts into her skin, sucking the flesh there and biting again, knowing it will bruise but far too gone to care. Ann moans, increases the pace and Anne pushes her hips down, trapping Ann’s hand between her thigh and Anne’s center. Anne grinds down against her, seeking out her release and finally finding it when Ann pulls her head back and roughly kisses her, hard enough to hurt a little, while Ann continues pushing even harder against her clit.

“Oh my _ god," _ Anne breathes, sagging her full weight down on top of Ann and panting for a moment, only vaguely aware of the fact that Ann starts licking her fingers again. Another wave of arousal hits Anne at the sight, and another moan escapes her lips.

“You can’t do things like that, you know.”

“What?” Ann asks, and Anne notices the flush of color that washes over her chest, her cheeks.

“Lick your fingers. Talk to me the way you do . . . it’s _ filthy." _ Anne says, a hint of teasing in her voice. She moves off of Ann to lay on the stairs next to her and attempts to button her pants back up.

“Sorry . . .I,” Ann pauses, getting an embarrassed look about her for a moment, “I don’t know what comes over me with you,” she finishes quietly, smirking back at Ann and tucking her blonde hair behind her ears. 

“Me either,” Anne admits softly, standing up and extending her hand to Ann, “But it is a good time, isn’t it?” she asks, not waiting for an answer before dipping her head to kiss Ann, maybe a little softer than she intends to.

“Yeah…” Ann mutters, breaking the kiss after a few minutes. “It is a good time. And you don’t treat me like I’m fragile. Which is maybe why I don’t have to act like I am when I’m with you,” she adds, shrugging her shoulders.

“Maybe...maybe we can keep meeting up. And doing this,” Anne suggests, motioning between them. Ann looks at her skeptically, and Anne tries not to notice the red around her lips from their rough kissing, the way Ann’s curls aren’t as tight as they were when she arrived, the way her eyes are just a touch glassy from having been fucked on the stairwell. 

“I just got out of a relationship,” Ann reasons.

“It doesn’t have to be a thing. I don’t do relationships,” Anne adds quickly.

“We’ll see.” Ann acquiesces, beginning to walk back towards where Anne first saw her. She readjusts her clothes, tucks her hair behind her ears a few times before adding, “I’ll text you.” 

And the she disappears back into the night. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes bathroom sex is inevitable.

_ I had fun last week. And the week before that. _

She gets the text as she’s walking out of her Women, Speculative Fiction, and Dystopia class. Ann feels her stomach do a somersault as she re-reads Anne’s words.

_ Me too. _ She taps it out and presses send. 

The phone vibrates back at her almost immediately:

_ Should we go for a threepeat? _

_ I don’t think I should. _ She’s not sure what she’s doing. But whatever it is, this girl is causing her more distraction than she needs right now. __   
__   
_ It’s not you, I just need to be focusing on schoolwork and I don’t think I should jump into anything. _ Ann hopes it doesn’t sound too cliche. But she really should be focusing on schoolwork rather than getting railed in the backs of storerooms. Or eaten out on staircases. __   
_   
_ __ OK.

Ann puts her phone back into her pocket and wonders if the other girl is really “OK” with it being over as quickly as it started.

***

That’s all Ann hears of Anne. _Okay_, she thinks to herself. _It was a blip. It’s fine. _Now she can say she’s had a random, meaningless hookup; that she’s had casual sex. That she’s been – well, that she’s _done_ it, not in a bed. _Meaningless_, she thinks again. But surprisingly intense. Surprisingly hot. Surprising in general.

But that “ok” text is all she hears of Anne until two and a half weeks later when Ann is scheduled to meet the professor for whom she works as a teaching assistant. They do this once a semester—get together for lunch somewhere off campus, to make it feel less formal and less like something school-related. And honestly this professor is much more hands off, much less demanding of Ann than some of her classmates’ professors, so she doesn’t really mind these get togethers in the first place. It’s just that today she happens to be running late, and lateness is his one pet peeve.

She rushes into the restaurant, a popular bar and grill spot a few blocks away from the building he teaches in, and Ann immediately sees him standing near a booth at the back. He waves her down and she starts moving toward him, only he doesn’t look upset. He doesn’t seem to show any emotion about the fact that she should have been here ten minutes ago. Instead he’s smiling, and as Ann approaches them she sees why: Because he’s standing there talking to another person. Another woman. A woman with long brown hair hanging low in a ponytail, tied back perfectly with a black ribbon.

“Ahh, Miss Walker!” her professor greets her.

“I’m sorry I’m late sir—” Ann starts.

“Not a problem, I ran into a former student of mine.”

The taller woman whips around.    
  
“Miss Walker, this is Miss Lister,” he says.

“Miss Walker.” Anne looks right into her eyes when she says it, an inscrutable look on her face.

“Hi,” Ann exhales.

“Have you two met?” He must notice that they don’t shake hands. Or perhaps it’s the way Ann’s face brightens the slightest bit.

“I believe I’ve seen you in my aunt’s bar before. You’ve  _ come _ in the bar, haven’t you, Miss Walker?” Anne asks her without breaking eye contact.

“Umm. . . ” is all Ann manages to choke out.

Anne flashes her a knowing smile.

_ Cheeky. _

“Miss Lister received the department’s creative research grant a few semesters ago.”

“She did?” Ann doesn’t mean to sound so shocked at his words, but she is kind of shocked.

“Yes so we were just catching up,” he finishes.   
  
“I was just passing,” Anne adds.

“Won’t you join us for a few minutes, Miss Lister?”

“As long as Miss Walker won’t mind.”

“Oh I imagine she’ll find you as entertaining as I do,” he says, motioning for them all to sit down before actually asking Ann if she minds.

But Anne notices. _Of course Anne notices._

“Well I shall nevertheless ask her to be sure,” Anne insists. “Miss Walker, might I join you?”

“Please.” It comes out as desperately as Ann means it.

***

The three of them order coffee and by the time it arrives, Professor Smith has already explained to Anne what class Ann is TA-ing for and how high her reviews are with the students whose papers she grades. Ann feels as though her ears are bright pink; she mostly hates when he gushes over her academic record but right now she’s sort of hoping it impresses Anne. And then Anne starts fielding Professor Smith’s questions about how her graduate thesis is progressing, and Ann gets the sense that Anne telling her she finished undergraduate classes early was only the tip of the iceberg.

A few minutes later Professor Smith has a question about the menu and attempts to flag down a waiter. While he’s turned away from the table, Ann sees Anne watching her as she wraps both her hands around her oversized cup of coffee. She spreads her fingers wide to make sure she’s gripping it carefully before raising it to her lips, Anne’s eyes following her hands the whole way.

“What’s this, Miss Walker?” Anne asks as she slides her fingertip across the inside edge of Ann’s right middle finger. On it is a thin tattoo of a dandelion, with the Latin name in tiny cursive underneath. Ann feels the hair on her arms stand up at the touch, and she shakily returns the cup to the table.

“It’s a dandelion,” she stammers. “My mother was a botanist. She . . . was always happiest among flowers, so that’s why….” she trails off.

“It’s exquisite.” 

The professor turns back to the women at the table, noticing that he’s missed the subject of their conversation. He raises his eyebrows to inquire.

“Oh . . . I have a tattoo . . . a dandelion,” Ann stutters in an attempt to catch him up. She points at her finger and offers an awkward smile.

“Dandelions are actually completely edible,” he explains. “Did you know they can be made into tea?”

“No, I wasn’t aware of that,” Anne replies. Ann just shakes her head.

“Quite remarkable,” he continues proudly.  
  
“Yes, I suppose even things that flutter away with the wind can be exceptional, can’t they?” Anne teases.

Ann raises her cup to her mouth again and takes another sip.

“Although the most remarkable flower I’ve seen as of late was a Peony.”

Ann chokes on her coffee.

“It was magnificent actually,” Anne says. “And when I pressed my face to it, it had the most intoxicating scent. I could have bathed in the flavor. In fact I was unable to think of largely anything else for days.”

Ann feels a throbbing between her legs. She’s trying not to remember the feel of Anne’s fingers tracing across her hip, Anne’s lips pressing against her flesh, Anne’s tongue sloppily stroking against her skin. She breathes out louder than she means to and uncrosses her legs under the table. She recrosses them the other way, squeezing them together, trying and failing to suppress the stirring happening inside her body. She sees Anne glance quickly down to her lap; she must have seen her adjusting herself in her seat, and out of her periphery Ann sees the bartender lick her lips.

“Some flowers are like that,” the professor offers.

“I shall remember it fondly. And hope to have it again soon.” Anne adds.

And if the professor notices that Anne used the word “have” instead of “find,” he doesn’t say anything about it.

*** 

By the time Anne gets up to leave fifteen minutes later, Ann is in quite a state. She was supposed to have been chatting with her professor about the semester, forcing herself to fake a laugh at his wretched attempt at humor, and kindly shoot the shit with him. Instead, she listened to Anne and him discuss how wild mammals were contributing to the epidemiology of tuberculosis and tried not to stare at Anne’s profile, her lips, her hands. That had become even more impossible when Anne dropped one of her hands below the table and rested it on the plastic fabric covering the seat in between them. She tipped her pinky finger out to run it against the outside of Ann’s thigh, and Ann’s whole body had shivered at the touch. 

But a minute later she had stopped — maybe Anne had remembered the last text Ann had sent her a few weeks ago — and when she stopped it had felt like being denied oxygen. So Ann had reached her own hand below the table and set it right next to Anne’s, her fingers grazing against Anne’s subtly at first and then more directly. With one hand, she turned Anne’s hand over so that it was facing up, and she dragged her nails across Anne’s palm, pressing them both into the seat cushion.

This seems to have gotten her message across. 

_Breathe, Ann. Breathe._ Ann hears words coming out of Anne’s mouth, and she sees Professor Smith nodding along, chiming in with questions or suggestions. She knows, logically, that they’re engaged in conversation and that she should try to keep up, but that’s easier said than done when she feels Anne’s fingers touch her skin again. Only this time, they’re not grazing her thighs, they’re not tickling her softly. Or gently. Instead they’re grabbing at her skirt, hiking it up bit by bit, her fingers inching one section of it up, and then another, and using her thumb to hold the bunched up fabric steady in her palm. 

When it’s all the way up, Anne doesn’t hesitate to press her fingertips into Ann’s flesh and it takes all Ann’s strength to keep from moaning with the anticipation of it all. Anne starts to toy with her, tease her; she runs her fingers along the top of Ann’s thigh, the outside of her leg close to where it meets Ann’s ass, all the while maintaining a straight face and casual conversation with Professor Smith.

“No, not Paris; that was part of what I found when I was studying indigenous populations off the coast of Argentina,” Anne says emphatically.

“Oh, that’s right,” the Professor says.

They keep speaking words at each other but then Anne moves her hand across the top of Ann’s legs, dips it inward towards Ann’s lap, and Ann feels her breath catch and her head start to get fuzzy.

Anne flits over where Ann’s panties cover her skin; she drags the backs of the fingernails over the lace, and Ann  _ refuses  _ to let her breathing become too labored even though she knows in any other case she would be panting into the air between them by now. She feels her lower body start to twitch as Anne’s fingers glide across the lace covering her curls, and then Anne is shimmying her fingers under the thong, digging into the dip where Ann’s leg meets the base of her body. Ann almost shrieks at the thought of Anne feeling the heat between her legs right here in this booth. She clenches her mouth shut. But her legs fall wider open. 

“…. the lung tissues and how tuberculosis spreads through populations to be so directly correlated to ….”

_ What the hell is she talking about?  _ Ann starts to turn her face toward Anne, but before she makes it all the way there, Anne quickly turns to her instead and says,

“You know, bonobos are most closely related to humans… Did you know, I dissected a baby once!” And as she finishes her sentence, she sneaks her hand — now fully inside Ann’s panties— as far down as possible without giving away her actions above the table. She slips her fingers through Ann’s folds, and Ann feels herself drip with want.

“Uhhnnn,” Ann chokes out, trying desperately not to let her eyes roll back in her head. Anne pulls her fingers out from inside Ann’s underwear, rolls her fingertips back across the skin of Ann’s thigh, and reaches for her own coffee cup with the same hand.

“I - I didn’t, umm, I didn’t know that. No,” Ann says. She’s trying to catch her breath and also trying to come up with a rational response to a question she didn’t hear in the first place. She eyes Anne longingly, inquisitively. Hungrily.

_ Don’t go. _

So when Anne rises out of her chair, Ann’s eyes follow her up, a pouty look on her face. And she tries to regain her composure as she’ll still have to finish her meal with the professor, but she can’t help but watch as Anne says her goodbyes and moves away from the table, heading not for the front door, but for someplace else entirely.

Then all the sound drains from the room and the only thing Ann can focus on — the only thing that exists in this moment — is the fact that over her professor’s shoulder in the background, Anne is pressing open the door to the bathroom, one hand on the handle and the other running through the silky hair of her ponytail, and she’s staring right at Ann with a greedy look in her eyes, and she’s raising her goddamn eyebrows. 

Ann immediately starts sifting through all sorts of made up excuses in her head.  _ There must be a way out of this, must be some reason I can get away from this table for a few minutes _ . But some deity somewhere — if there is such a thing — must be pitying her, must know what it’s like to have this thirst go unquenched because then the professor is answering his phone and simultaneously holding up his pointer finger in her direction.

“Hi dear,” he says into his phone.

He looks at Ann and rolls his eyes, half-jokingly. “Sure, just let me step outside for a few minutes,” he says, and then he places his phone against his chest as if to mute it. “This will only take me a few minutes— I’m so sorry Ann.”

“No, it’s fine, Professor! Take your time!” She says with a little too much enthusiasm.

And as soon as he has disappeared from their booth, she scoots out herself and rushes toward the restroom.

She finds Anne leaning casually against the sink, not unlike that first day in the bar, only this time she looks smug. She looks  _ smug as fuck. _

“Well, well, well.”

Suddenly Ann’s body feels like it’s on fire. She pushes forward, closer to Anne and immediately presses her hands against the flat of Anne’s chest, tracing the outlines of her collarbones with nervous pointer fingers. 

“What happened to focusing on your studies, Miss Walker?”

“You make it… difficult,” Ann breathes.”

“I only—”

“Stop talking,” Ann cuts her off. “Put your hands on me.” She doesn’t want to wait for Anne to ask her for consent. She’s so far past that point right now.

Anne looks surprised to find Ann being so direct, and more surprised still when Ann’s fingers weave through her hair, scraping against the back of her scalp and pulling her down toward Ann’s eager mouth. She lowers her hands to Ann’s waist and brings their bodies together. But it’s not hard enough, it’s not close enough, it’s not  _ now _ enough.

Ann walks them back — she drops her hands momentarily from Anne’s hair to hook her fingers into belt loops and clumsily backstep them into an open stall— and she reaches around the taller woman’s frame to lock the door behind them. Anne’s hands drop to her thighs and start kneading into the soft skin there, sending Ann’s arousal into overdrive. Because Anne is again so close to giving her what she wants, fingertips _so near_ to touching her where she’s already wet and waiting and the pang of her desire is battling, is slowly overtaking the pleasure of having Anne’s hands gripping her flesh.

Ann fists Anne’s hair again and tugs her ponytail downward, causing Anne to tilt her chin up toward the sky and Anne lets out a guttural moan when Ann’s teeth scrape against her exposed throat.

“Ann-“

Ann doesn’t know why Anne is holding back but she’s done waiting. She stops nipping at the column of Anne’s throat, she readjusts the hand clenched in Anne’s hair to face her forward again, and she brings her lips to rest against Anne’s ear.

“Shut. Up,” she whispers. “And  _ fuck _ me, Miss Lister.”

Anne turns her face to meet Ann’s eyes.

“Now.”

Anne tightens her grip on Ann’s thighs and presses her body even more into Ann’s. She pushes Ann back, the cool plastic of the bathroom stall sliding against her back and cutting through her thin dress and burning her skin even more, creating pinpricks of sensation everywhere she’s touched by Anne, by the wall, by her clothes. Anne slides her hands higher, under Ann’s skimpy little dress and up over her ass, palming the band of the lace thong she snuck her fingers into earlier. Ann feels every hair on her body stand up when Anne’s fingertips start to dip under it again and she’s about to blurt out, “rip it off” when Anne brings her face back to Ann’s and breathes against her mouth. Ann opens her lips, waiting, _ praying _ for Anne’s tongue, but just then Anne lowers her hand and begins to stroke her fingertip across the tiny piece of fabric between her legs, wet with want. And the “mmmm” that she releases into Ann’s mouth sends goosebumps all over Ann’s skin. The thong must be soaked through, Ann thinks, because she’s staring into Anne’s eyes which look equal parts satisfied and hungry.

_ You always make me this wet,  _ she wants to say.  _ I’m soaked every time I see you, every time I think about you, your mouth, your fingers. _ But with Anne’s hot breath against her mouth, open and impatient, and with the way Anne begins to lick the edges of her lips, nibble on them, all she can do is pant into their shared exhales.

Ann’s need is almost uncontrollable at this point; she grips Anne’s shoulder, digs her fingernails in, just as Anne deftly slides the thong over and runs her pointer finger through the slick valley in between her legs. 

“Mmmm,” she says again, pleased and smiling.

Anne removes her hand from where it teases the base of Ann’s body and Ann groans at the loss of contact, but Anne wastes no time in bringing her hand toward her own mouth, her fingertip glistening under the fluorescent lights. Except Ann’s body is on fire and Anne is being  _ too gentle _ and  _ too slow _ so Ann grabs Anne’s wrist and halts her hand in mid air. She brings Anne’s hand instead toward her own mouth, watching the spark in Anne’s eyes get brighter, more devilish, as she licks the tip of her forefinger, takes it into her mouth, tastes herself, and swallows.

_ “Filthy.” _ It purrs out of Anne and Ann prays that she’s finally unleashed the animal inside her.

Anne grabs Ann’s right thigh this time and lifts it up, sliding her own leg in between both of the smaller woman’s. She hoists Ann up and presses her ass on top of the bulky toilet paper holder, balancing her there delicately and Ann braces her foot against the toilet, keeping herself steady. Anne wraps Ann’s other leg around her waist and presses her thumb into the space under Ann’s hip bone. Hard, as if to lock her in place.

Ann melts at the way Anne can lift her up so easily, like she’s a  _ fucking rag doll  _ and she starts listing in her head all the places she wants Anne to take her like this, but she loses her train of thought just as quickly as it came once Anne roughly tugs her wet underwear out of the way, her fingertips sweeping through Ann’s curls, teasing.  _ Softly.  _ _ Too soft. _ And Anne’s deliberate, measured strokes, up and down, up and down, are not. fast. enough. to quench the fire that’s building within Ann so she starts chanting  _ fuck me. Fuck me. FUCKME!  _ in her head until finally one of them slips out of her mouth.

Anne stills at the sound.

Ann reaches for Anne’s hair again, grabbing at her neck and the back of her head with renewed fervor. She pulls Anne’s face toward hers, mouth agape and waiting to feel Anne’s lips, her breath, her tongue, but Anne releases her grip on Ann’s hip with the hand which has remained there, and instead she moves it to the base of Ann’s throat, pushing her backwards until the back of her head is flush against the wall. Ann moans and closes her eyes as Anne’s fingers put pressure around her throat. _She’s getting too close and she hasn’t even gotten to feel Anne’s fingers yet. She needs them inside her, filling her, stretching her, fucking her until she forgets her own name._

“Look at me,” Anne growls.

Anne’s fingers graze her clit. Then she starts pressing into it, circling it, kneading it, and Ann’s breaths start to speed up. But her eyes are still closed.

“Open your eyes,” Anne demands, her one hand moving from Ann’s clit down to her entrance, then back up, using the wetness that’s now coating the insides of her thighs to stroke her faster, harder; her other hand on Ann’s throat tightens just slightly.

“Look at me. . . Miss Walker.”

When she opens her eyes she sees Anne’s deep brown eyes, pupils already dilated, widen as she thrusts two fingers into her. Ann tries to throw her head back but she’s locked between the wall and Anne’s body, Anne’s grip on her perfectly tight, and every time Anne’s fingers pound into her body Anne thrusts her hips into Ann’s, grinding against the back of her own hand. Ann squeezes Anne’s clothes everywhere she can: her shoulders, her back, she tugs on her belt loops, wanting more, needing more, not having skin to dig her nails into. Anne won’t kiss her, won’t let her slide their tongues against each other. She’s just watching Ann’s face contort, her eyes roll back as Anne keeps pumping in and out of her. She rolls her thumb over Ann’s clit, keeping steady her rhythm as she rocks in and out of Ann’s core. Ann sees the lust in Anne’s eyes and starts to wonder whether Anne will tell her how warm she is, how  _ tight _ she feels; wonders whether Anne’s been dreaming of this again too— being back inside of her, making her plead and beg until she’s rutting against her, bearing down on Anne’s hand or in Anne’s lap. Whether she’s been craving the feeling of having Ann’s walls quiver and clench around her fingers or having Ann’s wetness pour into her mouth as it wraps around her.

Ann starts to bob her head down— she’s trying to look down at where their bodies meet, she wants to see how Anne’s lean fingers disappear into her, just below where Anne has bunched her dress up to take Ann here, to fuck her with easy access. Anne releases her hand from where it throttled Ann’s neck, allowing Ann to watch her fingers impale her over and over again, and the sight of their fucking coupled with the low grunts seeping out of Anne like she’s devouring a delicious snack makes Ann’s legs start to tremble. Every time Anne pumps into her, her hip bones grind into Ann’s as she buries into Ann’s center, her fingertips deepening, her fingers going in past the knuckles. She’s rough, bruising, and Ann groans at how she’s been waiting to be railed by Anne like this, dreaming of the morning she’d wake up sore from Anne’s ramming into her on top of a counter or bent over a table, and Ann is starting to fall apart. She can feel the shaking of her body intensify, the way she pulsates from within start to speed up, the wetness that’s practically dripping out of her right now.

Ann tilts her head back up and seeks Anne’s tongue — if she could only taste her mouth, feel her passionate kisses she’d come undone, but Anne continues to deny her. And then they hear the bathroom door open.

Ann knows she’s breathing far too loud, making too much noise. Anne must know it too, because with a swift motion she throws the hand that had been gripping Ann’s neck over her mouth instead, her palm against Ann’s lips; the warmth of Ann’s ragged breaths heating her skin in waves. Anne slows her thrusting,  _ her fucking, _ and just  _ slowly _ presses into Ann’s center, curling her fingers  _ slowly. _ Dragging them in and out  _ slowly. _ Putting pressure, rubbing and toying with Ann’s sensitive bud,  _ slowly. _ The change in speed has made Ann lose all control: she’s rutting against Anne’s hand, trying to grind down and thrash around on it to increase the tempo and trying to  _ ride _ Anne’s fingers and  _ fuck herself  _ on Anne’s fingers and whoever came into the bathroom is only just washing their hands but they’re not going fast enough because Anne’s hand is clamped shut over Ann’s mouth but it’s not doing much to stifle the long moans that emanate from her throat.

The water turns off and Anne finds Ann’s eyes; she knows if they can stay silent just another second she can find release, and Ann is pleading and begging Anne with her eyes to pound into her, to finish her off, to split her open and let her come apart and  _ thank god _ the hand towel dispenser makes its telltale sound because then the paper tears and the door opens and the footsteps retreat and Anne replaces her hand with her lips and drives her tongue into Ann’s mouth while simultaneously slamming three of her fingers into Ann’s slick pussy. Ann whimpers and  _ whimpers _ and the sound is lost into their shared kiss, hungry and rough and hot. 

Anne breathes into her mouth, “_You’re so tight, Miss Walker,_” and Ann feels the smoothness of Anne’s fingers as they enter her but is lost to the _stretch _and the sensation of feeling _full_ but still greedy for more and with her tongue finally finding purchase against Anne’s she grips the seat of Anne’s pants and rocks her, pulling her harshly into her own body. Anne’s free hand drops to below Ann’s ass and Anne must feel Ann twitch and must see how Ann’s leg is shaking because she recenters herself on her legs and cants Ann’s ass up towards her. Ann’s leg falls from around her waist and skids for purchase against the wall behind her, and with their new angle Anne’s fingers reach deeper into the depths of Ann’s body; she drives into her only a few more times before Ann is clenching and convulsing around her with an “_oh my god_” on her lips.

Her orgasm crashes through her, Anne biting, sucking on her bottom lip and kneading her fingers into the plush of her ass. Ann feels Anne tug her cheek toward her while Anne plunges her other hand as deep into her as anyone has ever been, and she wonders if being restrained like this, anchored between Anne’s fingers with her ass bare and slamming against the bathroom wall is what ecstasy feels like. Ripples course through her center in uneven spurts; she feels herself tighten around Anne’s fingers in pulses and she sees Anne watching her as her ab muscles tense, her shoulders fold in, and her head tucks into the side of Anne’s neck. Anne continues to stroke her inner walls, and Ann’s mouth opens against the skin of her neck, only this time no sound comes out, just one labored breath after another, until at last she bites down on Anne’s flesh and her body weakens inch by inch.

Ann’s frame gives in, she doubles over, falling forward onto Anne’s shoulder, and Anne waits a second longer before easing her soaked fingers out. Ann reaches her wrist down and grabs Anne’s hand, lacing their fingers together in sticky wetness, as Anne gently helps Ann maneuver her leg down to the floor from where it had been wedged against the wall.

Anne untangles their fingers and reaches down toward the floor for the toilet paper roll, tearing off a few squares and wiping her fingers clean. Ann watches her, shamefully proud of the mess she’s made, of how she’s just been thoroughly fucked, up against a wall, in the bathroom, her dress hiked up and her strappy sandals still on. Anne smooths out Ann’s dress from where it sat bunched around her hips, and she grazes between Ann’s legs and goes to help her fix her underwear.

“Useless” she exhales, and she loops her forefingers through the band and drags it down Ann’s legs before she can protest.

Ann watches as the goddess in front of her balls up the wet thong and puts it coolly in her pocket, all the while smirking and never breaking eye contact with Ann.

“I’ll go out first.” She presses a quick kiss to Ann’s forehead— as if they didn’t just fuck hurriedly in a bathroom stall— and tucks her strayed curls behind her ears. She reaches down for more toilet paper and presses it into Ann’s palms.

“Clean yourself up, Miss Walker.”

Anne turns to exit the bathroom stall but not before Ann sees the edges of her lips rise in subtle delight.

_ I’m gonna be so sore tomorrow,  _ Ann thinks to herself once Anne has left, with the taste of Anne still on her lips, the feeling of being fucked raw starting to ache throughout her bones. As she reaches for more toilet paper, she grins.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ann invites Anne to her office hours. With a special request.

In the broad light of day, a college campus seems a lot different than it does at 3am.

At least, that’s the first impression Anne has as she moves through the crowd of early 20-something people, backpacks and shoulder bags firmly in place and phones in front of their faces. Most of the people around here even have headphones plugging their ears, making Anne feel pretty private as she strides between them all, getting ever closer to her destination.

The text had come the day after they had run into each other in the bar, and Anne had swallowed back a quickly beating heart at the words she had read:

_ If I told you that my office hours ended at 2 tomorrow, and I had my office to myself after that, would that count as notice? _

Anne’s reply had been swift and affirmative, and it had only taken a handful of other texts to ensure that she would be in Ann’s office the following day.

With a little something extra.

***

It doesn't really take her long to find the place, considering all university buildings look the exact same inside and they all tend to have a convoluted sense of arrangement. And yet still, here she is, on the third floor of some random campus building knocking at a door that looked much the same as every single other door in the hall. There is no name on the door, just a room number that corresponds with the one Ann had texted her, and Anne can’t help but nervously shift as she waits for the door to open.

Besides, she hasn’t packed a cock between her legs for a while, and though certain her use of it would be stellar she's a little worried it might be showing.

Luckily, the door swings open within seconds and Ann stands before her in jeans and a t-shirt, hair pulled back into a messy bun, looking fully the part of a harried college student. Anne convinces herself that Ann’s face didn’t soften when she sees her.

“Hey. Hi.” Ann blushes, stepping back enough to give Anne space to step in.

“Your own office, huh?” Anne asks, immediately striding past her to look around, curiosity getting the better of her.

“Well, not mine. Sort of. Just for the semester. My professor’s is across the hall and this one was empty, so I get use of it for now.” Ann manages to stammer out as Anne pokes around, picking up different trinkets and assessing them. The room is crammed full of artifacts and odd looking skulls and dry specimens, but strangely it looks like the desk had been cleaned out, leaving nothing but a notebook and a table lamp behind. Ann’s feminine scrawl is etched across some of the pages, but Anne quickly glances away to see what sorts of treasures are scattered across the shelves and filing cabinets lining the walls.

“So none of this is yours?”

“No, no - it belongs to another professor. Some anthropology professor. They’re on sabbatical for a semester. So it’s just a place for me to meet students and do homework and have...privacy.” Anne glances back at her, one eyebrow cocking as she slowly sets down a wolf skull she had been toying with.

“What would you need privacy for, Miss Walker?” Anne asks with a smirk, sliding by Ann just a little too  _ closely _ before reaching past her to lock the door.

“Sometimes, some meetings are very sensitive.” Ann says, glancing back to Anne and moving towards the desk to close her notebook, “you can’t just have them in a bar bathroom.” Anne chuckles and moves closer to Ann, sliding her hands to Ann’s hips and grasping them firmly before pressing into her from behind so she can feel the hard ridge of her cock against her ass.

“Would you say this is a sensitive meeting?” Anne breathes against Ann’s neck, feeling the smaller woman shudder against her and grind back with a subtle movement.

“Y-yes, this would count as a sensitive meeting…” Ann stammers, bracing her hands flat against the desk as Anne lowers her torso against Ann’s back. For a brief moment, Anne imagines taking Ann like this: fucking her senseless while she bends over the desk, screaming her name and begging for more.

Instead, Anne slides her hands up Ann’s body, bunching the t-shirt up against her wrists along the way. She palms her ribs, soaking in the feeling of her warm skin before turning her around quickly and pushing her back onto the desk before moving to stand between her legs. In a bold move, Ann’s legs wrap around her waist automatically and her hand slides down to the front of her pants, rubbing the bulge there.

“You want me to fuck you with it?” Anne asks, inwardly flinching for a moment at the way she shied away from the word - it was so unlike her but suddenly she couldn’t say it when Ann was gazing up at her from under her eyelashes, spread out on a desk waiting for her to fuck her.

“With your dick?” Ann fills in, coy and smirking but with a flush spreading across her cheeks as the word leaves her mouth. Anne doesn’t answer, but instead crushes their lips together in a bruising kiss. She breaks the kiss long enough to lift Ann’s shirt over her head, tossing it behind them and scooting her hips closer to the edge of the desk so that she's firmly seated against the crotch of Anne’s pants. Ann lets out a moan, grabbing Anne’s waist and hooking her fingers into Anne’s belt loops before yanking her tightly into her center.

“Hungry for it, baby?” Anne chuckles, peppering a few light kisses down Ann’s neck before sucking in a small patch of skin and sinking her teeth into the delicate skin there.

“Yessss…” Ann hisses, fingers fumbling with Anne’s belt before sliding it free of the buckle and getting to the button beneath. She draws the zipper down and shimmies the low riding pants off of Anne’s slim hips, pausing when they're halfway off, “Sailboats?”

Anne looks down at her boxers, the thick band lying flat against her abdomen and beyond it a black field littered with red and navy sailboats covering the strap on and her upper thighs.

“I like them.” Anne shrugs, slipping her hands around Ann’s ass to the front of her jeans so she can unbutton them, “Besides, don’t you care more about what’s inside?” she asks huskily, tugging at Ann’s pants while lifting her slightly to help her get them off. Ann lifts her hips, and Anne hooks her fingers in Ann’s thong, dragging it off with her pants. Ann giggles, wiggling Anne’s pants the rest of the way off of her hips and pecking her on the lips at the same time.

“Yeah, I do.” Ann replies, sliding her fingers into the waistband of Anne’s boxers and toying with it, letting her fingers dip just far enough to feel the band of strap on within. Anne moans softly, arousal uncoiling in her abdomen as she runs her hands up Ann’s thighs and dips into her center, feeling how wet she is. 

_ Soaking wet. _

Anne brings her fingers up and grazes over Ann’s clit, watching as the smaller woman shudders and leans into her. She repeats the motion, dipping down and pressing her fingers ever so slightly against Ann’s entrance,  _ teasing _ there noncommittally before leaving her hole and stroking back over her clit. Her other hand toys with Ann’s breast through her bra, gently rolling her nipple between her thumb and forefinger. Her hand never loses its teasing rhythm: down,  _ pressing _ into Ann, then back up to rub over her slick nub. Back and forth.

Ann keens against her, fumbling with her shirt buttons and grasping fistfuls of fabric as Anne’s relentless toying starts to drive her mad.

“I want to feel you,  _ baby.” _ she whines, her words the only weapon she has to use against Anne. Anne growls as Ann’s  _ baby _ slithers to the base of her spine and nestles there, wrapping around her with a fire that makes her want to plow into Ann until she hears her screaming her name. Taking her hand off of Ann’s slick pussy for the briefest of moments, Anne whisks her own shirt over her head and shoves her boxers down to join her pants at her ankles, revealing the flesh toned packing cock she has neatly tucked between her legs. Using Ann’s wetness that coats her fingers, she strokes up and down the length of the rubber dick, already warm from being pressed into her skin. Ann moans softly as she watches, her hands instantly slipping around Anne’s waist and drawing her closer, fingers digging tightly into the small of Anne’s back. Stretching up, Ann nuzzles her against Anne’s earlobe, sucking it into her mouth before biting down on it.

“You want me to fuck you with my cock?” Anne asks, rubbing the now wet head of the dick against Ann’s tight hole and feeling her legs tighten around her hips.

“Please, Anne…” she husks, right in her fucking ear, barely making any noise. Anne is throbbing, soaking through the strap on already, but she has to keep it together.

“Please what,  _ baby?” _ Anne teases, pressing the head against Ann’s clit and feeling her nails dig into her spine in response.

“Put it— in me.” Ann begs, pulling now, fingers scrabbling against the hard muscle of Anne’s lower back as she tries to direct Anne inside of her. Anne continues her tease, rubbing the dick from her entrance to her clit, waiting Ann out.

“How much do you want it? Should I make you beg for it?” 

“Jesus Christ, Anne!” Ann moans, her hips edging closer, her face red and flushed and drops of sweat starting to crop up across her brow. Anne meets her eyes, wild and desperate and all pupils, and presses the dick into her in one slow, smooth motion, slipping her hand from the cock to Ann’s hips to hold them flush together, just letting Ann get used to the feeling of being filled with Anne.

“Oh,  _ fuck...” _ Ann cries out, her eyes rolling back in her head and her head falling back on her shoulders as Anne drives into her, her hands digging into the small of Anne’s back and her nails scraping hard into the skin there. Anne groans, looking down between them at the cock buried to the hilt in Ann before pulling her hips back, sliding out  _ slowly _ to the tip before pushing back in at an excruciating pace. She can’t tear her eyes away from the sight of the dick, sliding in and out, getting wetter and wetter as Ann’s body takes it in and releases it over and over.

“This is fucking hot, Ann,” she murmurs, her hands gripping Ann’s hips tightly as Ann’s hands come up and grab onto her shoulders, clutching her there as if she's holding on for the ride of her life.

“You feel so good filling me up,” Ann gasps, her eyes closed and her head still thrown back, clearly completely lost to the sensation of Anne sliding in and out of her. Anne can see the flush spreading across her chest, her nipples taut and hard through the thin fabric of her lacy bra and she pushes Ann back and captures a nipple in her mouth, rubbing her tongue against it through the rough fabric as she continues her brutally fastidious pace. Ann lifts her legs and moans, getting Anne deeper inside and pressing her heels against Anne’s ass in a clear signal that she wants more. But Anne is not acquiescing. She takes her time lavishing from one nipple to the next, her pace firm and methodical, and she feels Ann slip a hand from her shoulder to press between their bodies. Anne grabs it and pins it above her head.

“No touching.” she commands, meeting Ann’s hazy, lust filled eyes.

“Anne—I’m so close — I need more...” Ann begs, rolling her hips into Anne’s and digging her heels in even harder.

“Not yet.” Anne insists, pressing Ann’s wrist tighter into the desk and quitting her thrusting. Ann instantly reacts, the hand on Ann’s shoulder snatching at her hair and pulling as her hips buck up into Anne. She growls in frustration.

“Anne— please!” Ann cries out, her legs cinching tighter as her body works itself onto Anne however it can. Anne isn't having it. This is her game, and Ann is not playing by the rules. She stands up, unwrapping Ann’s legs from around her and stepping back, sliding out of Ann. Immediately Ann glares at her, chest heaving in frustration and anger. Anne grabs her hips and slides her off the desk to her feet before turning her around and pressing against her spine, lining her mouth up to Ann’s ear.

“If you’re not going to let me fuck you like I want, I’m going to make you let me,” she whispers, licking along the shell of Ann’s ear and feeling her shudder hard, “Bend over.”

Ann instantly bends forward onto the desk, bracing herself on her elbows and looking over her shoulder at Anne. That’s when Anne sees it. At the nape of her neck, the same delicate latin scrawl,  _ strongylodon macrobotrys,  _ and below it a vine of tear shaped petals running down Ann’s back, a dusky teal color filling in each leaf as they sprawl this way and that from Ann’s spine. Anne runs her thumb up Ann’s back, grazing the tattoo lightly, her breathing picking up at the sight.

_ Her body is a fucking secret garden of pleasure, _ Anne thinks, heat throbbing through her as she takes in the whole picture before her: Ann observing her patiently through arousal-glazed eyes, bent over a desk that's slightly lower than her hips, and beneath the swell of her ass the lips of her pussy peeking out, already red and swollen from being fucked. Biting back a groan, Anne grabs Ann’s hips and lines the cock up before slipping it into her waiting hole, watching as Ann’s head falls forward against the desk.

“You like it”

_ Thrust _

“Like  _ this _ ”

_ Thrust _

“Don’t you?” she asks, her words punctuated by thrusts and her pace instantly faster and harder than before.

“Yeah, baby.” Ann whines out, reaching one hand back and grabbing Anne’s thigh, sinking her nails in hard to the muscle there. Anne slides one hand around to Ann’s front, over her curls and through her folds to find her clit and rub it in time with her thrusting.

“Such a filthy girl, never wanting me to take you at home, always wanting it over a desk or a barrel.” Anne grinds out, her own arousal almost too overwhelming at this point. The slap of her body against Ann’s, the slick sound of the cock in Ann’s pussy are pushing her so close to the edge that she feels like the slightest touch might make her come.

“Anne, I’m gonna come!” Ann cries out, her torso balling up and tensing as she presses back hard against Anne’s hand, her nails sharply digging into Anne’s thigh as she moans. Her free hand scrabbles against the desk for purchase, knocking her notebook to the floor as she comes, gasping for air and sobbing out Anne’s name over and over. Anne pushes through her orgasm, thrusting over and over before finally slowing when Ann goes completely limp against the desk with a final sigh.

“Oh my fucking  _ god.” _ Anne groans, sagging against Ann’s back and sliding the cock free from her, feeling Ann shudder slightly at the sensation. Ann giggles and reaches back to stroke Anne’s arm, which is now looped loosely around her waist.

“Oh my god, Anne,” she says finally, intertwining her fingers with Anne’s sticky ones.

“I’m so turned on right now.” Anne murmurs, peppering light kisses across Ann’s sweaty back, pausing to lick at a leaf or a vine here and there. Ann stands up, dislodging her and turning around before pushing Anne down into one of the chairs sitting in front of the desk.

“Maybe I should fix that,” Ann replies in a soft voice, kneeling between Anne’s legs and staring up at her. Anne swallows hard, the sight of Ann Walker’s soft, just had the  _ shit _ fucked out her face between her legs with a fake cock just sitting there making her throb with anticipation. Ann rakes her nails up Anne’s naked thighs, inching her face closer to the rubber cock that was still coated in her wetness. As her lips near its head, Anne’s breathing increases and she pushes her fingers into Ann’s hair, feeling the silken strands fall between her fingers before tightening her grip to hold on. The first touch of Ann’s lips push the saddle base of the dildo right into Anne’s clit, and she groans softly, pulling Ann’s mouth down onto her harder.

“Suck it, Ann.” she encourages, now thrusting up against the pressure of Ann’s teasing lips. Ann’s mouth opens and she takes Anne in, sliding her mouth down over the head and shaft of the toy, sucking with delicious friction as her head begins bobbing up and down, pressing and rubbing it against Anne over and over. She moans around the shaft, her noises muffled by the rubber cock, and her hands slide under Anne’s ass and grip it, pulling her harder into Ann’s mouth. Anne starts to lose herself to the push and slide of the dildo against her clit, the saddle rubbing deliciously in time with Ann’s bobbing head, building and building.

“Don’t stop baby, keep sucking me, I’m coming, I’m  _ co—” _ Anne chokes out, her grip tightening in Ann’s hair as she thrust up, pinned between Ann’s hands and her mouth, clenching and pulsing with her release. It feels like an eternity before she can breathe again. She untangles her fingers from Ann’s hair, and Ann slides the dildo out of her mouth and slips up Anne’s body with a smirk on her face. Anne draws Ann into her lap, enjoying the feeling of her naked body pressed against her skin. Ann tucks her face into Anne’s neck and kisses her there several times, giggling lightly.

“I see you have a thing for blow jobs.” she teases, biting down on Anne’s pulse point. Anne pinches her side, appreciating the light yelp of surprise from Ann.

“I don’t think I’m the only one.” Anne quips back, turning her head and nudging Ann’s face up so she can kiss her lightly. Ann tastes of her herself, and Anne can’t help but suck gently on Ann’s lower lip, savoring the heady, intimate flavor. The kiss meanders on, teasing tongues and teeth nibbling at lips, and Anne feels Ann’s hands stroking along her jaw and rubbing at the base of her neck and toying lazily with the small gauges in her ears. Her heartbeat quickens, and not from arousal. She pulls back from the kiss, feeling a distinct need to escape.

“We better get cleaned up,” she says flatly, pecking Ann on the lips and trying to remove any emotion from her voice. _ She's not going to catch feelings for this girl. _ This girl she had just fucked over a desk - this girl who was, arguably, the best sex of her life.

This girl who was a surprise.

She would endeavour to remain as she was: single with this other single fuck buddy, doing these surprisingly naughty things that she had never done with anyone else. And also not having sex with anyone else.

Anne pushes the thought from her mind and helps Ann out of her lap, ignoring the slight confusion on Ann’s face. Standing and pulling her pants and boxers up, Anne tucks the fake dick back into her boxers, making a mental note to stop by the bathroom on her way out to really clean up. Taking a few steps across the room, she picks up her shirt and pulls it back over her head, watching Ann slowly get dressed as she rebuttons the few buttons Ann had managed to undo.

“You have any plans today?” Ann asks, facing away from her as she turns her t-shirt back inside out and pulls it over her head, her pants already back in place.

“I dunno. I have the afternoon free. Probably errands.” Anne feints, the small talk making her feel so wrong. Their relationship felt so off kilter in a snap: she had so many other things she wanted to ask Ann, to talk to Ann about, to tell Ann, but instead she now found herself fumbling with her belt and smoothing her hand through her hair and lying.

She knew full well she was going to go see Spiderman. But if she said that, she’d want to invite Ann. And that would be a date. And they weren’t dating. She didn’t date. This wasn’t a relationship.

So she doesn’t ask Ann what she was doing.

“I’ll, uh...I’ll see you later?” she asks, meeting Ann’s gaze as Ann turns around, finally fully dressed.

“Yeah. I’ll text you.” Ann replies, maintaining that singular power dynamic between them. But then she does something Anne isn’t prepared for: she closes the distance between them and stands on her tiptoes in order to softly kiss Anne’s lips, her touch velvet and tender. Something inside of Anne melts.

“OK.” she whispers, smiling down at Ann, her blonde hair framing her delicate features and the light dancing across her freckles.

_ SNAP OUT OF IT ANNE! _ Her mind screams, and she blinks, adjusting her stance slightly and pecking Ann once on the cheek before striding to the door. With one quick glance back at Ann, she slips out the door and into the hall, away from the temptation in the office.

_ Shit. Shitshitshit. _

  
  



	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ann and Anne end up in a movie theater. Things happen.

Ann spent the rest of the afternoon in a bit of a daze. Something about the way that she hadn’t even needed to tell Anne what she wanted— she’d just sent a text message, _ alluding _ to Anne wearing something extra— and Anne was right there on her level. Or maybe it was the way Anne talked to her, made her feel like she was the sexiest woman alive. Made her feel brave and strong and like nothing she said or did was stupid or embarrassing. Anne made her feel like everything about what she wanted was totally okay. And like what she wanted was _ totally hot. _ Maybe it was all of it. Maybe it was just _ Anne. _

“Anne!” It came out of her mouth automatically when she saw her in the courtyard. To be honest, she was still sort of thinking about the way Anne’s face looked gazing down at her, her own mouth wrapped around what Anne was packing, how Anne’s mouth was opened wide as she came, Ann’s fingers digging into the skin of her ass as her whole body seemed to tighten. And then the image of Anne’s face in that moment was dissolving into Anne’s face in this moment, a startled face staring back at her in the center of the courtyard.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to shout at you.” Ann says.

“Well I kinda like making you shout,” Anne replies without missing a beat. “Or don’t you know that by now?”

_ Charming motherfucker. _

“So where are you running off to?” Ann asks. She sees the wheels turning in Anne’s head and wonders if maybe she shouldn’t have asked, but then Anne says,

“I was actually headed to see a movie. Do you want to join?”

“Are you sure? Cuz …. we— we don’t typically do those things…”

“Things that don’t involve fucking in bathrooms or over desks?” Anne interrupts.

“Right.”

“It’s just a movie, Ann,” Anne teases, and she’s right. But it still sort of feels like a significant step for them.

“Well what are you seeing?” Ann inquires.

“Spider-man, obviously.”

“Alright, I’m in.”

“Okay.” Anne says. “Just promise me you’re not gonna be one of those people that talks incessantly the whole time.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be good,” Ann promises, and Anne squints her eyes, clearly trying to interpret the playful smile that Ann is unsuccesffuly trying to hide.

***  
  
Anne had bought the tickets so Ann buys the popcorn. They settle into their seats. It’s not a date. _ No way is this a date. _ She couldn’t date Anne anyway. She doesn’t want to be in a relationship.  
  
And it’s _ Anne. _ They don’t talk about their feelings. They just screw. Well Anne did help her when she wanted to be less fragile, helped her pull fire out of her bones. And Anne looks her in the eyes and asks her what she wants and asks her before she touches her. Anne makes her feel feminine and wanted and alive. But maybe all that just comes as a result of so many incredible orgasms.  
  
Whatever. It’s not a date. She doesn’t even _know_ Anne. She knows her last name now, but she doesn’t know where she’s from, how many girls she’s dated, been with, fucked during office hours. Or guys for that matter. Well probably not guys. She doesn’t know whether she’s got brothers or sisters, how old she was when she came out, whether she’s ever had her heart broken. Any of it. She doesn’t even know what she looks like all the way undressed.  
  
She’s thought about it— of course she’s thought about it: the two of them in the shower together, warm water running down Anne’s lean frame, her toned arms, muscular thighs. She’s thought about undressing her in the center of her room, running her hands down her torso, peeling her boxer briefs down her legs. What is it about girls in boys’ undies? Every time she’d seen the thick band against Anne’s waist peek through under her shirt, everytime she grips it, slides her fingers up underneath it— well she’d be lying if she said the thought of getting inside them didn’t make her wet.

_ Uncontrollably wet. _

  
  
Like earlier this afternoon, when she’d unzipped Anne’s pants and found her black boxer briefs under her pants, little red and navy sailboats patterned across them. It was simultaneously the most adorable and sexy thing she’d ever seen. And then she’d seen what Anne had waiting for her underneath them.  
  
Anne grabs a handful of popcorn and pops most of it into her mouth, snapping Ann out of her daydream. Anne catches her eye and throws a piece into the air, letting it fall back into her open mouth, and Ann smiles at her, enjoying the showboating. She does it again, tossing and catching the popped kernel, and then again, clearly trying to impress Ann, until she misses one and it falls into her lap.  
  
Ann peers over the armrest to Anne’s lap, where the piece of popcorn sits right in between her thighs, a little yellow fluff contrasted against the dark of her pants. And Ann can’t help but slip back into her fantasy of wondering what sexy briefs she’s wearing now.  
  
Except— _ she already knows. _ It must be still the sailboats. Because Anne is still in the same clothes from earlier and unless she went home to change and only changed her undies, she’d still be wearing everything she was when they were together against Ann’s desk. When Anne gripped her hips tightly and pressed into her from behind with—  
  
_ Oh god. She’s still wearing it. _  
  
Ann realizes her mouth is open. She’s still staring at Anne’s lap.  
  
“You want it?” Anne motions to the piece of popcorn. Or perhaps to what’s underneath it.  
  
Their eyes meet. Anne looks at her with brown eyes full of intensity, full of heat, like she could burn right through Ann.  
  
Ann says nothing. Instead she just lowers her hand and finds the dropped piece of popcorn, picking it up between her pointer finger and thumb, but letting her other fingers fall and land against Anne’s pants. She presses them against Anne’s body, right at her inseam, and when she strokes them up she feels a familiar shape. A distinct shape.  
  
She’s still packing.  
  
All the hair on her body stands on edge. She knows there must be fire in her eyes when she returns Anne’s gaze. She feels Anne take a quick breath in as she traces the outline of the strap on in her pants, her upper body rising slightly as the air fills her lungs. Finally Ann breaks her gaze and picks her hand back up. She pops the piece of popcorn into her mouth.  
  
Ann turns her head back to the screen as she chews and Anne is still watching her intently when the lights turn down and the previews start to play in front of them.

  
  
By twenty minutes into the movie, Ann is unable to think of anything except being wrapped around Anne, right here in this movie theater. The ache between her legs is excruciating, and her thong is doing nothing to contain what a sopping wet mess she is. She might even have already soaked through where she’s sitting on her cotton dress.   
  
Anne takes a sip of her Diet Coke and Ann notices that she returns it to the cup holder on her other side— not the one that separates them but the one on the far side of Anne’s body. Ann takes the hint and lifts the armrest up, tucking it into where their seats meet behind them.  
  
Ann scoots her body closer to Anne’s and Anne shifts to let her know the move is welcome.  
  
Gathering her courage, Ann puts her palm over Anne’s hand, lifting it and bringing it toward her body. She spreads her legs slowly, lowering both their hands and sliding them under her dress in the space between her thighs. In her periphery she sees Anne’s body still, straightening her back at the feel of Ann’s warm skin; she feels Anne inhale deeply when her fingers find the slippery wetness where Ann’s legs come together.  
  
She’s fucking soaked.  
  
Anne starts toying with her, feeling around, but groans in frustration when she can’t angle her hand the way she wants, obviously limited in mobility by their current position in the movie theater seats.  
  
Unable to wait any longer, Ann reaches across her body and finds Anne’s zipper. Anne straightens up again in her chair, then holds her breath as Ann starts inching the zipper down. Once she finishes she glides her hand back up to unhook her pant button from where it clasps at the top of her jeans.  
  
Anne watches her eyes, and in the blue light of the movie theater screen she sees Ann move both her hands to the seat cushion on either side of her body. She raises herself off the seat with her palms, sliding her body over bit by bit until she’s sitting on top of one of Anne’s legs.  
  
Through deep, even breaths, she reaches her arm down beside her and shimmies her hand into her Anne’s open pants. She wades through the overlapped fabric of her boxer briefs and finds smooth rubber. Anne closes her eyes as Ann grips the shaft and pulls it free of her underwear. Ann lifts her dress, spreads it out over their laps and Anne immediately takes the hint and starts bunching it up by its edges until she can feel the skin of Ann’s ass pressing back against her fingertips.  
  
Ann licks her palm in one wide stroke and then palms the shaft of Anne’s strap on, trying to spread around some of the wet, although she knows she won’t need it. Anne dips her head and lifts up the dress to watch Ann’s thin fingers grip her fake cock, slip up and down around it in smooth strokes.  
  
Anne very slowly adjusts herself, placing her hands on Ann’s hips. She lifts Ann up just enough and inches her over more until she’s centered on top of her body. She scoots the edges of the dress over— though no one could probably see them anyway so far near the back of the theater— but she must feel where the fabric was damp with Ann’s wanting because she whispers in her ear,  
  
“You’ve been wanting me to fill you up again, haven’t you?”  
  
Ann just bites her bottom lip and throws her head back against Anne’s shoulder.  
  
Anne wedges her right hand underneath Ann, between their bodies, and spreads her own legs slightly to give herself a gap, some space to work with. She bends the rubber and runs it along the slippery valley in between Ann’s legs. And when Ann starts to roll her body, her hips, just slightly, Anne tightens her grip on Ann’s left hip.  
  
“No. Stay still.” She husks into Ann’s ear.  
  
Ann stops her movement— all except the rise and fall of her chest. She lets her body lean back into Anne’s, pressing them both into the chair, and her center twitches when she feels the curves of Anne’s chest against her back.  
  
Anne teases her cock against Ann’s entrance, and finally, when Ann is about ready to twist her body around and grab it herself, Anne taps the side of Ann’s leg and motions for her to lift up off the seat. Ann pushes herself up with her hands, and then Anne’s hands are gripping her hips again and adjusting her slightly this way and that to line her up just so. She lets Anne guide her down onto the cool rubber shaft, her slickness covering it as she lowers herself bit by bit back into Anne’s lap. She feels the tip enter her, and then the first inch, and more and more until she feels it stretch her, and until eventually she’s pressing back down on Anne’s thighs. Ann wants nothing more than to start swaying her hips and bucking into Anne until she’s coming all over her pants, but for some reason Anne still won’t let her move.  
  
“I need you to be quiet for me, okay Ann?”  
  
“Mm-hmmm. I’ll be quiet,” Ann pants. She tries to roll her hips again and manages to move only slightly before Anne’s hands on her are tightening.  
  
“Not yet. I just wanna feel you for a minute, okay? Can you be real still and let me feel you, Ann?”  
  
“Anne—” Ann is almost writhing. She doesn’t want to be still.  
  
Anne grabs Ann’s hips again, fingers pressing into her skin, keeping her static, stationary.  
  
“Watch your movie, _baby.” _Anne breathes it against the nape of her neck.  
  
Ann slowly nods. She’ll be still. She can be still for another minute. She’ll just sit there, stuffed to the hilt, while they pretend to watch this fucking movie, her insides twitching around Anne’s cock. Helpless, Ann again tries to tilt her body, rotate her hips, anything to gain friction, to feel movement. All Anne does is sharpen her grip.  
  
“Patience, _baby.”_ Anne whispers.  
  
Ann begins to quiver at the words. She wants to bear down, to grind into Anne. She wants to ride her, get good and fucked right here in the seat. But instead she just has to sit there, a good little girl with Anne’s cock in between her legs.  
  
She tries squirming again after what feels like an eternity, although she knows it probably hasn’t been more than thirty seconds.  
  
“I’m gonna let you ride me in just a second, ok _baby?_ That’s what you want, isn’t it?”  
  
“Mmm-hmmm.” She’s starting to feel the rhythm of Anne’s breathing, now in sync with her own. It’s sending shivers across her skin, and she starts to feel a tingle rise up from somewhere deep within her. She’s squeezing her legs together and she knows that if Anne doesn’t start moving— or letting her move— soon, it’s going to be over even before it starts.  
  
“You feel so good, _baby.”_  
  
Ann feels herself start to twitch. She exhales, tries to lean forward and press her hands into Anne’s thighs. But Anne pulls her back, and she feels wetness drip down the inside of her legs.  
  
“You’re doing so good, being so still for me baby. So I can feel how tight you are around me.”  
  
Ann can’t keep it down, can’t stop the wave from crashing down on her. Anne’s not even moving below her. She’s not thrusting or rolling her hips and she’s not even fucking her, she’s just sitting still, Ann on her lap with her cock inside her, but the sound of Anne’s voice and the words she’s saying and Anne’s warm breath on her neck is all too much and Ann is clenching and pulsing against the cock stuffing her full. She bears down into Anne’s lap and Anne must realize she can’t hold it off any longer because Anne’s hand moves to wrap around her body and cover her mouth, pulling Ann into her side and tucking her into her neck. Ann feels Anne’s body against her back and her other hand is still on her hip, but now her fingers trace lightly across her abdomen, dip into the top of her curls and her hand doesn’t even make it all the way into her folds, it doesn’t even graze her clit before Ann is convulsing around her, digging her weight into Anne’s lap and clutching at Anne’s hand where it teases her skin. She throws her head back, heaving ragged breaths into Anne’s palm, and turning her head away from Anne as the orgasm rips through her body.

  
  
She raises her lower half off Anne and lets the toy slip out of her; then after a few deep breaths into the dark movie theater she sits back down on top of Anne’s thighs. She stays facing away from her until she catches her breath at last. When she turns back to Anne, her face is white with embarrassment.  
  
Anne’s eyebrows are raised, and she looks surprised. Surprised, but not upset. No, definitely not upset. She looks pleased. A smile stretches across her face and she starts to giggle. Ann quickly covers her mouth so as not to draw any attention to them, but Ann can’t help but giggle too. Anne leans into her and rolls them both on their sides in the seat, lowering their bodies, ducking behind the row of chairs in front of them like a couple of teenagers.  
  
“You just—” Anne starts.

“I know, I’m—I’m sorry,” Ann says.

“Ann—” Anne shakes her head, still chuckling. “Why are you always apologizing?”

  
“Because I was supposed to wait,” Ann says softly.

“Yeah and I was supposed to actually fuck you, so I guess we’re even.” Anne tucks the strap on back into her boxers and zips herself back up.

She hits Anne on the shoulder. “Rude.”

“You came didn’t you?”

“Yeah but it was…” Ann trails off.

“What?”

“Embarrassing.”

“No baby, it was hot. Like really fucking hot.” Anne explains, and Ann can’t help but blush at how much she likes the thought of Ann getting turned on by her.

“Stop calling me baby,” Ann protests.

“No way! You think I didn’t notice how ridiculously wet you got when I kept calling you baby?!”

“Shhhh!” Ann says, and she wonders if Anne can see how pink her cheeks are turning in the darkness of the theater.

“Oh come on,” Anne urges. “One of these days you’re gonna get over being embarrassed around me.”

Ann furrows her brows at Anne and straightens out in her chair, trying to hold back the grin that wants to spread across her face. She hopes by her words Anne means that they’re going to keep doing this. Whatever _ this _ is.

“Watch your movie, _ baby.” _


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ann maybe gets a little drunk. And a little jealous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the feedback. Now just read your smut, baby.

When Ann had suggested that maybe Anne would be able to run into her at a college bar downtown during a ladies night, Anne had shrugged off the suggestion as nothing more than another bar hookup. After the theater, Anne needed a break. She didn’t  _ really _ need to spend more time with Ann right now, and this habit was starting to look a lot more like dating.

Meeting a girl for a night out at a bar with her and a bunch of her friends-- that sounds suspiciously like a date. Even if you do end up having sex there. Or after.

Instead, Anne finds herself out on her own, drinking a few fingers of bourbon from a short glass full of ice in a hole in the wall bar far from campus, scribbling furiously in her journal. She has more than a little bit to unburden from her mind, and it throughout her life it always seemed that her journal was the only place she could truly be free: it listens without judgement, provides her the opportunity to reflect on her actions with clarity, and allows her to practice what she might say or do and improve upon it before it comes to fruition. It’s truly her only safe place.

And lately it’s been filled with thoughts of Ann Walker, shortened to A- in all of her entries, as she rationalizes to herself every single fleeting emotion that crosses her well guarded heart.

“You a writer?” The bartender asks, topping her drink off. He's a pot bellied man, balding with a mustache, and while Anne knows that he’s just trying to be nice, she’s not really interested in the conversation.

“No,” she returns, snicking the journal shut and sliding the pen behind her ear. In one smooth motion she knocks back the alcohol in the glass, pulls out her wallet and pushes some cash across the bar, and returns her wallet and journal into her back pocket.

“Oh,” the bartender replies, clearing away the glass and cash in a single motion, smiling at her sympathetically, “Maybe someday, honey.”

Anne winces and rolls her eyes at his ignorance, unwilling to give him more of her time. A quick glance at her phone reveals that it’s already 11:30, and she strides out onto the street on the hunt for something to do. Normally a night like this would lead her on a chase, finding someone to warm her bed for the evening. But she finds herself restless, caught up in the thought of Ann in her arms in the theater, giggling at their indiscretion. Ann, with her teal Jade Vine sprawling lazily down her spine, flower tattoos littering her body like some sort of secret fucking game.

Ann, who begged for her, grabbed her ass and her pants in a bathroom stall while getting fucked harder than Anne had ever fucked  _ anyone, _ living up to every fantasy and wet dream that Anne had ever had about any girl ever. Ann who she'd bent over a desk. Ann who came from just sitting on her dick. 

_ Ann Ann Ann _

The beat of Anne’s footsteps carry her across the pavement to the rhythm of the thoughts in her head, and before she knows where her subconscious is carrying her she’s standing in front of The Library. Anne sighs and tucks her hands into the front of the skinny jeans that hang low on her hip bones and sag a little over her ass, squinting up at the neon bar sign, combatting her desire to go in. Ann might not even be in there. She’s also looking rather casual, between the jeans and the worn Death Cab for Cutie t-shirt she’d gotten at a concert a lifetime ago. She looks down at the Converse on her feet and winces. Not exactly the most dapper presentation.

_ What is life, if we’re not taking the odd risk? _ Anne thinks, sighing and running her fingers through the hair that falls loose around her shoulders. There isn’t even a ribbon or hair tie at her disposal. She had been to random islands off the coast of god knows where South America, but this -  _ this random bar  _ \- somehow seems more frightening than stepping off of any of those boats and into disease infested populations.

***

The interior of the bar is dimly lit but not dark, which frankly surprises Anne. She’s able to easily make out all of the people in the vastly overcrowded space, and she’s also able to easily discern that they are mostly young lesbians.

_ Girl’s _ night.

Ann hadn’t meant just any ladies. She had meant gay ladies. Women. Lady women. Glancing around, she almost instantly makes eye contact with a young, attractive girl who is clearly eyeing her. And a little further back, behind her, is Ann. She can see that Ann is with two other women, laughing and sipping drinks while leaning on the bar itself. She looks gorgeous, as always, in a form fitting sleeveless dress that’s cut low and shows off plenty of her cleavage. The skirt of the dress stops just shy of her knees, dancing there with each movement. People are crammed in around them but they don’t seem to mind, clearly in their own world. Obviously, Ann is busy. Besides, aren’t they able to do their own thing? A rush of annoyance surges through Anne and her eyes flit back to the girl who is now pushing off the bar and walking towards her.

_ We’re not dating. _ She reminds herself, turning her shoulders to align more with this newcomer.  _ Why are you here, then? _ Whistles through her brain, and she shoves it out with a flirty grin at this person who just isn’t quite - and can’t quite - be what she wants.

“I haven’t seen you here before,” she says, a soft French accent touching on all of her words.

“I haven’t been here before.” Anne counters, stepping closer and leaning in a bit, making it easier to hear over the music.

“I’m Maria. Maria Barlow.” 

“Anne.” Maria leans in even closer, her lips against Anne’s ears now, and Anne feels her arm slide to her waist and her fingers hook into a belt loop. Looking up as Maria leans in, Anne instantly meets Ann’s eyes, and she freezes. Ann’s drink is halfway to her mouth and she’s watching Anne closely,  _ so fucking closely. _

“Want to dance?” Anne blinks, snapping back to the girl with her arm around her waist and turning her face to murmur back in Maria’s ear.

“Yeah, let’s do it.” Maria takes her hand, leading Anne to the dance floor, and Anne tries to ignore the feeling of Ann’s eyes burning into her the entire way there. Once they reach the dance floor, Anne spins Maria with a flourish before pulling the smaller woman’s body back into hers and settling her hands on Maria’s hips, moving their bodies synchronously in time to the music. Maria wraps her arms around Anne’s neck, grinding her hips against her salaciously.

Anne watches Ann slam the rest of her drink, never taking her eyes off of the pair. Normally Anne wouldn’t be into jealousy, but in this instance it has Anne smirking as she looks back to Maria.

“You’ve got an interesting look. Very hot.” Maria says, running the fingers of her right hand along Anne’s jawline to toy with one of her gauges, “It’s like punk rock meets sexy grad student.”

“This isn’t my normal look.” Anne clarifies, allowing Maria’s advances for now. It just makes the game all that more delicious.

“Oh?” Maria pulls the pen from behind her ear, holding it between them and clicking it once. Anne plucks it from her fingers and tucks it into her back pocket along with the journal, cocking an eyebrow as Maria’s hand follows, sliding up under her shirt. This girl is interesting.

“It’s definitely my most casual look,” Anne confirms, pulling Maria tighter against her and smirking at Ann over her shoulder.

_ She’s practically fucking steaming. _ Anne thinks, letting her hands drift lower and ride the curve of Maria’s ass, delighting in the way she responds, her hips swaying harder to the rhythm. Ann is well into another drink, her friends chattering away on either side of her, oblivious to Ann’s sweltering mix of rage and misery.

They only have eyes for each other.

And then Anne feels it, Maria’s hands combing through her loose hair, streaming down over her shoulders, fingers carding through the strands and pushing it back from her face.

“Well it works for you, baby.” Maria husks, pulling Anne down to kiss her. Anne can’t help but feel like the word sounds strange coming from this other person’s mouth...some kind of betrayal.

_ "Excuse _ me.”

Anne stiffens, standing upright and glancing smugly over at the blonde piece of rage standing next to her and Maria.

“I’d like to cut in.” Ann grinds out, looking only at Anne.

“Go get your own date, honey.” Maria tosses out, not even glancing Ann’s way and continuing her gentle and tugging and fingering of Anne’s hair.

“I’ve already found her,  _ honey." _ Ann spits, and Anne gently unwinds herself from Maria.

“I’ve had a wonderful time, but I should accept this dance.” Anne says, kissing the back of Maria’s hand and quirking an eyebrow at her, silently pushing her to take the hint. Maria glances between the two and seems to get the game for what it was, shaking her head.

“Have a good night then, Anne. Maybe I’ll see you around…” she trails off, winking before walking away. Anne almost can’t stop the smirk on her face when she looks to Ann - normally cool and collected Ann, who stand next to her and seethes.

“What was  _ that?" _ she asks, looking Anne up and down and sidling as close as she can without actually touching Anne.

“I don’t turn down pretty girls who ask me to dance.” Anne replies, shrugging and cocking an eyebrow at Ann.

“Then let’s fucking dance.” Ann retorts, grabbing Anne by the waist and immediately pushing her hands under Anne’s shirt and into the back of her pants.

“Shit, Ann!” Anne chokes out in surprise, their hips slamming together as Ann starts grinding against her.

“What, don’t you like it like this with a girl’s hands all over you?” Ann asks roughly, her fingers finding their way past the waistband of her boxers and grabbing on to the curve over her ass, pulling her tightly into Ann.

“It’s better when it’s you,” she mutters in Ann’s ear, bending her head to do so and letting her hands rest chastely on Ann’s hips. Anne lets her tongue peek out from between her lips and she licks along the shell of Ann’s ear, sighing heavily into it, “It’s always better when it’s you, baby.”

“Don’t forget it.” Ann growls, hands squeezing her ass tightly and digging her nails in there before leaving her pants and inching up her back under her shirt, under the band of her sports bra, and scratching back down to the waistband of her pants.

“You’re drunk.” Anne states with a grin, enjoying the feeling of Ann’s rough hands on her body, claiming her posessively.

“I’m not fucking drunk.” Ann hisses spreading her legs so that one of Anne’s slots between hers perfectly. She grinds down on it in time to the beat.

“Yeah, okay,” Anne chuckles, sliding her hands down Ann’s ass, helping Ann grind harder onto her leg and listening to Ann moan into her ear. Ann’s hands run through Anne’s hair, gripping hard and digging her nails into Anne’s scalp.

“What the fuck are you wearing??” she asks, pulling Anne’s head back and assessing her, grinding down harder with each successive beat. Anne groans, feeling herself grow wetter as Ann tugs roughly on her loose hair.

“Clothes. You’re saying fuck  _ a lot." _ Anne jokes, enjoying the feeling of Ann gripping her hair tightly while riding her thigh in the middle of the packed dance floor.

“Consider it subliminal messaging.” Ann retorts, leaning in and biting Anne on the neck, groaning as she finds a particularly good spot against Anne’s thigh, “Who gave you the right to look this good in a fucking t-shirt?”

“Hmm?” Anne is now completely distracted, rocking Ann’s hips against her hard and listening to Ann’s breathing and moaning increase in pitch and fervor in her ear.

“And your hair…” Ann shudders against her, her nails scraping against the hair covering the back of Anne's head. She sucks Anne’s earlobe into her mouth, then breathes, “you’re mine, all this is mine.” Anne groans in response, pushing Ann’s hips down against her and dragging her up the length of her thigh and feeling Ann tense and start to clench and she feels Ann's nails dig into her scalp even more and then suddenly Ann is coming undone, clinging to Anne tightly and shivering through an orgasm that takes them both by surprise. She buries her face in Anne’s neck and freezes, catching her breath for a second as Anne holds her tight, eyes sealed to the nearest exit and ready to shuffle them both out.

This is not going to be how the night ends for her.

“Let’s go.” Anne mutters into her ear, pulling her leg from between Ann’s thighs and glancing around them. Other couples are dancing and gyrating, making out and not noticing the world around them. The anonymity of the crowd is a beautiful disguise.

“Yeah,” Ann mutters, still slightly dazed, letting Anne lead her from the bar and through the rear exit door, out into the cool night air. The alley behind the bar is deserted, and Anne whisks Ann into a narrow crevasse between buildings, sandwiching Ann’s body between Anne and the brick wall behind her. 

“Jealous, baby?” she murmurs, dipping her head and kissing down Ann’s neck, licking and sucking on the skin there possessively. She bites down hard above Ann’s collarbone, seeking to leave a mark that Ann will remember the next day.

“Mmm…” Ann hums, running her fingers through Anne’s long, loose hair, pulling it gently every time she gets to the end. Anne’s hands find their way to Ann’s knees, touching the skin just under her skirt and letting the fabric bunch around her wrists as she grips Ann’s thighs tightly.

“Why are you jealous?” Anne presses, her hands moving ever higher to cup Ann’s ass and squeeze there, kneading the soft flesh and drawing a moan from Ann.

“I don’t want other women touching you.” Ann blurts out, the night air sobering her a little more than maybe she intends, and she flushes immediately.

“Why not?” Anne asks, kissing across Ann’s chest and letting her right hand follow the band of Ann’s thong to the front and dipping inside without hesitation, sweeping through Ann’s soaking folds and bringing her wetness up to rub her clit as she waits for an answer. Ann’s leg instantly hooks itself around Anne’s waist, drawing her closer.

“I...I don’t want,” Ann gasps, whining a little at the feel of Anne’s fingers relentlessly massaging her.

“Want what,  _ baby." _ Anne presses, holding her mouth a hair’s breadth away from Ann’s and breathing heavily against her.

“Want you making anyone else feel how I do when you’re inside me.” Ann rushes out, yanking Anne’s face against her own in a crushing kiss, sliding her tongue against Anne’s and moaning into her mouth. Anne rubs harder, circling her clit as Ann grinds her hips down into Anne’s hand and cries into Anne’s mouth.

“No one can make you feel the way I do.” Anne says breathlessly, pulling back to look deep into Ann’s eyes before dropping to her knees in front of Ann. Looking up, she sees Ann’s blonde hair spilling down over her shoulders as Ann looks at her eagerly, wantonly, and combs her fingers through Anne’s hair.

“I know,” she breathes, her eyes full of something besides just lust, and Anne pushes it aside so she can push up Ann’s dress and pull her thong down. Hooking Ann’s leg over her shoulder, Anne kisses her Peony tenderly, licking it once before working her way down, inhaling Ann’s scent with her eyes closed.

“I could bathe in your flavor,” Anne whispers, hearing a moan from far above her and feeling Ann’s fingers tighten in her hair. Anne’s core throbs and she grows wetter at the smell of Ann coupled with her tight grip on her hair. Grasping Ann’s hips with both of her hands, she pins her to the wall, holding her tightly still as she runs her tongue between Ann’s folds, collecting all of the wetness there over and over. Ann tries rocking her hips but Anne’s grip is steadfast as she lavishes Ann, avoiding the sensitive nub awaiting her and taking her time licking and sucking every inch of Ann. She presses her tongue deep inside Ann’s throbbing center, delighting in the gasp that emanates from Ann and the way Ann bears down on her face, riding her tongue as best she can while Anne holds her still. Anne takes her this way for what feels like hours, pressing her tongue into Ann over and over, licking up and skating over her clit but paying it no real attention before thrusting her tongue back inside Ann to bask in her flavor.

“Please, Anne, please…” Ann begs, so close she’s beyond rational words. Anne can’t help but give her what she so desperately needs, sealing her lips around Ann’s slick nub and rubbing her tongue over it again and again until Ann comes undone, fingers gripping her hair as hard as they can and her heel digging tightly into Anne’s back as she folds over Anne’s head, shaking and gasping over and over.

Finally, Anne stands up, wiping her face and helping Ann find her balance and pull her underwear back up. Ann wraps her arms around Anne’s neck and nuzzles into the space between her throat and collarbone, sighing happily as Anne’s arms find their home around her waist and pull her close to her body.

“I think we have to figure out what this is.” Anne finally admits, breaking the silence.

“Yeah, but not today.” Ann murmurs into her neck, massaging the fine hair at the base of her neck in small circles.

“Yes, but I think it’s best to -” Anne trails off, interrupted when Ann pulls back and looks at her, a soft smile on her face.

“We have other, more important things to do today,” she says, pulling Anne in for a languid kiss, one of her hands cupping Anne’s cheek momentarily before moving to her ear and tugging at the gauge there, running her fingers over it and pinching it delicately as they kissed, “I love these,” she murmurs into Anne’s mouth, her other hand coming down to play with the other ear, sloppily missing the lobe before coming back to toy with the gauge there.

“I know.” Anne laughs against her lips, renewing their kisses and relishing the feel of Ann’s fingers rubbing along her face and ears as their lips lazily meet and part, shared affection suddenly completely unbridled.

“Come home with me,” Ann whispers, breaking the kiss and gazing up at Anne, her lips red and swollen from their shared kisses. Anne can’t resist her, and though she is throbbing with relentless arousal, she nods. 

“I want to make you come,” Ann finishes, and Anne swallows.

“I’ll come with you.” Anne says, and a tipsy Ann takes Anne’s hand in hers and leads her down the alley, oblivious to the wordplay.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tell me how much you want it, baby.

Ann Walker wasn’t going to do this. She wasn’t supposed to invite her back to her apartment, wasn’t supposed to be thinking about all the things she wanted to do with her, all the things she wanted to do _ to _ her. Or all the things she wanted Anne Lister to do to _ her. _ But they _ had _ something. That much was clear. What wasn’t clear was what they were going to do about it. Anne had asked her and Ann had avoided it. Avoided it and invited Anne back to her apartment instead. _ Good thinking, Ann, _ she chides herself. It was a stupid idea because now they’d have to talk about what they were to each other, what they were doing with each other. She wouldn’t be able to bail, to leave the bathroom stall, or the movie theater, or her office, and continue to not deal with it. This was her home: with her kitchen, her couch, _ her bed. _

Okay so maybe it wasn’t a _ totally _ stupid idea.

But that’s why at present Ann is rinsing herself off in the shower, soaping off her skin and running conditioner through her hair. She’d left Anne in her kitchen— she’d asked Anne if she wanted to join her and part of her still couldn’t believe that she’d been so forward— but the effects of her three drinks earlier were still wearing off and also Anne just makes her want to _ do things. _Makes her want to be more direct, more brave, more raw. Truth is, being around Anne makes her feel alive.

So she’d left Anne in her kitchen with a beer and the promise that she’d be right back and then she’d jumped in the hot water hoping to sober up a little, hoping that the insatiable need to have Anne to herself, to keep Anne for herself, would follow the water down the drain. Ann finishes her shower and tries to subdue the thought that keeps creeping back into her head: the idea of having Anne in here with her. _ But showering together isn’t really casual, _ she thinks, pushing it down. _ This is casual. I can do casual. _

Ann gets out of the shower and quickly towels off her hair; she brushes through it a few times and wraps it into a messy bun unceremoniously. She throws on a bra and undies, a heather gray t shirt, and a pink flowy skirt. It’s night time of course, but she always feels pretty in those bohemian style skirts and she wants to look like she isn’t trying that hard._ Casual. I can do casual, _ she repeats to herself.

Anne Lister can definitely do casual. Since she’s sobered up a little by now, it’s like Ann is experiencing Anne again tonight for the first time. She’s in a t-shirt. A tight t-shirt, one that it looks like she’s had for years. And jeans hanging low on her hips. She looks lean and effortlessly hot, and Ann is only looking at her from behind. She’s taken her shoes off, and her toes are tapping on the tile floor, actually her whole body is sort of rocking. She’s dancing. And cooking. Ann takes a step into the kitchen to get a better look.

She’s fucking cooking her an omelette, complete with peppers, spinach, and homemade pico de gallo.

“You made me breakfast.”

Anne twists around, obviously startled by Ann’s presence and once Anne’s eyes take her in, Ann feels certain that the skirt/shirt combo was the right choice. Anne’s eyes rake over her, pausing over the damp patches that spot Ann’s shoulder from where she didn’t dry her hair off all the way.

“I thought you might be hungry,” Anne explains. “And I thought you might need to replenish, so you'll have more energy for later,” She says with a wink, and something about this sight, this woman before her who continues to surprise her makes Ann want to go wrap her arms around Anne’s waist and plant kisses all over her neck, the side of her face.

She suppresses the daydream and just says, “Perfect. I’m starved.”

It’s easy, their chemistry. Their rapport. Anne sits on the counter, legs with bare feet dangling over the lower cabinets. She takes a swig of her beer every few minutes, tilting her head back and letting it pour down her throat. Ann eats every last bite of her omelette, licking her fingers when she’s done. She catches Anne watching her, beer bottle held to her lip but paused there. She doesn’t take a sip.

“What?” Ann blushes.

“You licked your fingers.”

“I had pico on them,” Ann explains playfully.

“I’ve seen you lick them when it wasn’t pico.”

Ann chuckles, an embarrassed look washing over her. She looks down at the floor.

“I don’t think you have any idea how hot you are,” Anne says.

“I don’t think you have any idea the things you make me want to do when I’m around you.”

“Well, then.” Anne waits until Ann looks back up at her, then motions with a quick head snap for Ann to come over to her.

Ann walks over to where Anne sits perched on the counter. She edges her body in between Anne’s legs and starts to run her palms up over Anne’s knees and back toward her thighs.

“So, Ann. You’ve showered. You’ve eaten. What do you want to do?”

“I dunno.” Ann shrugs her shoulders.  
  
“You want me to bend you over?” Anne asks as she grips Ann’s hips and pivots her around, her body still sitting on the edge of the counter.

“Anne!” Ann tries to scold her but they both know how this goes.

“What?!” Anne replies, unashamed. She wraps her legs around Ann’s frame and pulls her back toward the counter, against the front of Anne’s body. She crosses her legs at the ankles, locking Ann in place, and without thinking Ann moves her hands to where Anne’s bare feet now rest against her belly button. She taps her fingers over the skin of Anne’s ankles, her mind starting to wander to all the places on Anne’s body she hasn’t gotten to explore yet.

“Want me to tie you up?” Anne inquires cooly.

Ann flips back around, finding Anne’s eyes, but she doesn’t answer.

“Well, what do you want?” Anne tries again.

“Any of it. All of it,” Ann says. _ You. _ “Half the time you don’t even let me do anything to you— what’s that about?”

“It’s fine, Ann,” Anne insists.

“But you don’t—“ Ann continues, motioning toward Anne’s lap.

“I do later,” Anne responds matter-of-factly.

“By yourself?”

“Yes.“

“That’s no fun.”

“Sure it is,” Anne teases.

“Not for me.”  
  
“Well I’m thinking of you if that makes you feel better.” Anne takes another sip of her beer, and flashes her most angelic smile at Ann.  
  
Hearing it like that—out loud, as plainly as if she were describing the weather— makes Ann’s face suddenly feel warm. No one has ever told her that they thought about her when they touched themselves. She blushes at the vision of Anne in her room, her hand down her shorts, her open mouth heaving breaths into the still, quiet air. And now that image is all she can think about.

“But isn’t it better if I’m actually here? Where you can feel me?” Ann asks. “See me?”

“You don’t need to take care of me, Ann.”

“I know I don’t _ need _ to.” Ann reaches for the beer in Anne’s grasp, then brings it to her own mouth and takes a big swig. She swallows and hands it back to Anne, letting her hands fall down to where Anne’s hands wrap around the half-empty beer bottle in her lap, and she rubs her thumbs against the insides of Anne’s thighs. “I want to,” she mutters.

Anne lifts her hands from where they brace her on the counter and she runs them through Ann’s damp hair, twisting her fingers into the bun, unlooping her thick ponytail holder to let her hair down. Once it’s out, she slips it over her wrist, and starts untangling the blonde locks, spreading it across her back, some pieces over her shoulder. Ann feels a shiver run down her spine; she tucks her head into her own shoulder at the surprising display of gentleness. 

“I’m starting to regret not having showered with you,” Anne admits.

Ann takes her hands from where they push against Anne’s inner thighs and slinks them into the hair at the base of Anne’s skull. She lazily twirls her fingers through the whispies there and brings her lips to Anne’s ear. “Well maybe I can get us dirty again.” She licks along the edge of Anne’s ear and tugs on her earlobe with her teeth.

“What are you suggesting?”

“I want to watch you,” Ann says. And she moves her head lower to kiss Anne’s cheek.

“Watch me?”

“Mmmm-hmmm,” Ann nods, and presses a kiss to Anne’s opposite cheek.

The faintest blush spreads across Anne’s face. “Why?”

“Because you turn me on.” Ann centers her face in front of Anne’s and finally kisses her chastely on the lips, just once.

“The feeling’s mutual,” Anne replies. “But as long as you’re here you should probably participate.”

“I’m thinking about it.”

Anne jumps off the counter.

“On one condition,” Ann says.

“I’m listening.”

“You do whatever I say.” Ann hears her own voice shake a little when she says it, but if Anne notices she doesn’t say anything.

***  
  
They stand a few feet apart on the rug in the middle of Ann’s room.

Ann shimmies her skirt off her hips and down her legs. Then Ann slips her hands in between her skin and her underwear, sliding them down and stepping out of them.  
  
Ann’s shirt is hanging low, now that it’s not tucked into her skirt, so it covers the edge of her body. And it looks like it’s taking all the strength in Anne’s body not to rip it off of her.

Anne steps into her, reaching for the hem. “Can I?”

“Not today,” Ann answers. “I want to watch you.”

“Yeah but—“ Anne sounds desperate.

“But nothing.” Ann smiles coyly and reaches for the bottom edge of Anne’s shirt, slipping it up her body and pulling it over her head. She immediately presses her hands to her stomach— there’s something about the way Anne’s torso looks with Ann’s hands on her like this, fitting perfectly against her toned abs, settled between the gentle slope of her chest and the v of her lower abdomen leading to where her pants hang low on her hips. Ann gets chills everytime she sees— and she always makes sure that she sees— the elastic waistband of Anne’s boxer briefs just above where the top of her pants meet her body, like a preview, a tease of what delicious things are to come. She’s so effortlessly sexy, Ann thinks, and something about this moment, the inevitable moment where Anne is just standing in front of her, both of them on the precipice, well, it never gets old. Anne still takes her breath away, just like that first day, that first crazy time in the storeroom. That first time that Ann had blurted out something that she wanted, that she needed, and that first time that someone had actually listened to her, heard her. Someone with kind eyes and fucking sexy hands— fucking sexy everything really— who is currently shirtless in front of her.

She looks up at Anne who’s just watching her. 

“I lost you for a minute there.”

“I wa—“ Ann starts.

“Trying to guess what mode of transportation is on my boxers today, eh?” 

“No, I—“

“Like I wasn’t gonna notice with how much you stare at them,” Anne teases.

Ann blushes, bites her lip.

“Well?” Anne straightens up her body and raises her eyebrows at her in a challenge.

Ann’s fingers dash toward the button and she aggressively pulls down Anne’s pants, running her hands back up her legs, thighs, as she stands back up.

_ Trains. Fucking adorable. _

  
She pushes Anne back on the bed by her shoulders.  
  
“You like the trains?” Anne smirks.

“I’m gonna like them better when they’re on the floor.”

She peels them down her legs without ceremony, Anne lifting her hips off the bed in an effort to help. They land around Anne’s ankles, but neither of them seem to notice because Ann is already climbing on top of Anne’s body. Anne, who’s now on her bed in her sports bra and nothing else.

Anne must feel Ann’s wetness as the base of her body grazes over the tops of Anne’s thighs because her eyes roll back slightly and her mouth opens, releasing a silent breath. Anne immediately moves her palms to cup the sides of Ann’s legs, attempting to hold her in place where she straddles her, Ann’s bent knees locking her in place on the bed.

“Lay back.”

Anne does, tilting her head forward to watch Ann slide her body, naked from the waist down, dragging herself over Anne’s trimmed curls, up her abdomen, settling on top of her waist, Anne’s fingernails digging into her thighs at the feeling. She moves her hands to Ann’s ass and starts pressing against it in waves trying to rock her back and forth. 

“Mmm-nnn,” Ann denies her. “I told you I want to watch you.”

At that Ann feels Anne’s hands uncup her cheeks and move lower, the back of Anne’s hands still grazing her ass as they find the right position. A quiet “ahhhhhh” escapes from Anne’s lips as her body relaxes underneath Ann.

And then Ann lifts her hands slowly and touches the edge of her t shirt, slowly bunching it up until enough of the fabric is in her palms, then finally lifting it over her head and revealing her scantily-clad torso to Anne. Her pink bra and Anne’s gray sports bra are the only things that separate them now, Ann’s soft curves leading the way to pert breasts hidden beneath a layer of silky cotton.

Anne doesn’t take her eyes off her cleavage.

That is, until they follow Ann’s small hands toward where she rubs them across her abs, the smooth skin of her stomach, and finally down past her own curls.

Ann starts moving around her own wetness, playing with herself, using it to keep herself slippery. She circles her clit, then begins to rub it, her head falling back in pleasure. She feels heat spilling out past her fingers onto Anne’s stomach, and Anne’s breath hitches, her stomach rising and falling with every deep inhale as Ann’s stickiness seeps onto her skin. And then Ann finds Anne’s eyes again and opens her mouth just barely as she buries her middle finger into herself. Ann eases into and out of herself once, twice, thrice over the sounds of Anne’s labored breaths and the gentle motion underneath her. Then Ann draws her finger out of herself and presses the tips of her fingers to Anne’s stomach, slinking across her belly button and toward her chest. She’s practically painting Anne’s stomach with her own slick, leaving a trail of wetness in the wake of every touch. She runs her fingers up to the ridges of her ribcage and slides them under the fabric of Anne’s sports bra. 

“This needs to move.”

Anne arches her back to lift her shoulders off the bed and Ann pushes it up, bunching it just under her collarbones so she can see Anne’s chest _ almost _ naked.

Ann impales herself again, harder and a little faster this time, riding her own middle finger and starting to rock over Anne’s frame. Then Ann pulls her finger out and inches it towards Anne’s face; she touches the corner of her mouth, traces over her bottom lip, and Anne opens it as if to pray that Ann will give her a taste.

Ann dips her soaked finger into Anne’s mouth and then hooks it under her top row of teeth, and Anne groans when Ann raises her hand just slightly, forcing Anne’s jaw up. Her eyes roll back in her head again, and Ann feels proud of the way Anne seems to be getting more and more turned on with her every touch.

“You like how I taste?” Ann coaxes her.

“Yessshh” Anne says around the finger still hooked under her incisors.

“Do you like when I come in your mouth?” Ann asks toyingly.

“Yeahhh.” It comes out of Anne’s mouth in a slow drawl, and Ann moves both her hands to Anne’s torso, pressing against the tan skin on her stomach, running fingers over her bare chest, cupping the perfect mounds there and taking in the sight of Anne under her control. She takes Anne’s nipples between her fingers, squeezing gently and watching Anne’s mouth open ever so slowly, as she still feels the movement underneath and behind her where Anne’s fingers play with herself.

Ann puts one finger back in her heat and continues tracing around Anne’s breast with the other, and then pulls her finger from her center and circles Anne’s free nipple slowly with it, her wetness leaving a sticky layer shining against her soft skin.

“Ann— you’re killing me,” Anne pants.

“I want you to feel how wet you make me.”

“I need you to touch me, Ann,” Anne begs.

“I will. But I want to see how close you get by yourself first, okay baby?” Ann teases.

Anne just groans in response. She’s starting to lose it— Ann can feel Anne’s lower body rocking underneath her and she wonders whether she should give in, but whatever alcohol lingers in her system convinces her to try something she’s always wanted to.

Ann scoots her body forward, trying to inch up toward Anne’s head by sliding one leg up and then the other while still straddling Anne’s torso. And Anne watches her, a hungry look on her face. She lifts her upper body up slightly by her elbows and then releases an “oh, god,” when she realizes where Ann is going.

Ann slowly lowers her body until her pussy lines up with Anne’s left breast, her heated core dipping onto Anne’s nipple. Ann can feel its firmness against her, pushing in and out of her with Anne’s ragged inhales and exhales. Ann’s so wet at this point that her slickness coats most of Anne’s chest and something about the way that Anne’s body glistens with her arousal and the knowledge that her own scent is going to linger on Anne for days makes Ann's insides feel like they’ve been lit on fire.

“Fuck, Ann.”

“You like me riding you like this? Fucking myself on your tits?”

“Ann, touch me.”

“Not yet, baby,” Ann snaps, shaking her head. Anne releases another low growl, and Ann peers over her own shoulder to see Anne’s hands: one of them presses against her clit and rounds it in a rapid circling motion, while the other spreads her lips wide. Ann feels herself leak more of her warm wetness onto Anne’s hard nipple at the sight.

“Let me taste you,” Anne pleads.

And Ann slides her body up the rest of the way, positioning herself with her legs on the sides of Anne’s head. She suspends herself above Anne’s face, and Anne opens her eyes and her mouth as if to prepare to take fucking commmunion but Ann just stays there, stays in midair with Anne below her on the bed, making Anne wait for her scent, her taste. She watches Anne breathe, uneven and heavy, until finally she whispers, “Ann,” and Ann relents and eases herself down onto Anne’s lips.

She finds a rhythm that works, lifting herself up and down so Anne’s tongue lurches into her and back out, then tilts herself forward so that Anne can focus on her clit. Anne smiles beneath her, into the base of her body, her chin and face slippery and sweaty and sloppy, the bedroom silent but for the primal noises they’re making. Graphic sounds of their bodies sliding, smacking into and against each other, animalistic sounds that Ann is too turned on to care about and that Anne doesn’t seem to notice at all— likely the result of Ann’s legs being clamped around her head and the fact that she’s “mmm-ing” loudly into Ann’s center every time it slips onto Anne’s tongue. The vibrations and the noises coming from the woman beneath her send her body into overdrive; and then she looks down at Anne’s face and she doesn’t know if she’s ever seen Anne look so pleased, so pleasured before, in all their sexual encounters nothing has seemed so delicious as Anne with a mouthful of her pussy, with a look of ecstasy on her face, and in that moment she’s sure she’s never seen anything quite as beautiful. Or quite as perfect.

Ann’s orgasm comes on too fast for her to avoid it; instead she raises her body off Anne’s face— a stupid grin on it now— as soon as her twitching subsides. Anne is panting faster and whispers, “I’m so close,” and so Ann asks as she climbs back down the bartender’s torso, “What do you want, baby?”

“Your fingers.”

“Don’t stop touching yourself Anne, I want to watch you,” Ann says, sliding down further and settling between Anne’s knees on the bed.

“Uh-huh,” Anne replies, her fingers still moving quickly through her folds, over her clit, rubbing and kneading it with abandon as Ann presses her palms to the insides of her thighs. Anne’s body quakes, her breath catching at the gentle touches, and then Ann is sliding her hands closer and closer, pushing her own thumb under where Anne’s is, adding pressure to her small nub, and hovering over Anne’s entrance with the other. She pushes against her hole, watches Anne’s eyes flutter back, and says “spread your legs for me,” her voice low and husky.

“Go inside me.” Anne pants it into the sky.

And Ann does. So very slowly. With the same finger she’d fucked herself with earlier.

“Faster baby.” Anne begs. But Ann just keeps easing in and out, so softly, so teasingly, curling her finger on the way down to press against Anne’s inner walls. 

“No, Anne.” Ann growls. “I’m going to enjoy you.”

Anne’s whole body starts to shake, in little bursts, in tandem with Ann’s finger as it enters her smoothly and steadily. And every time Ann’s knuckles brush against Anne’s skin, the deepest she can be filled, Anne releases a groan into the space between them. Ann moves her other hand away from her clit and starts teasing her fingers through the short hairs just above it.

“You got to taste me. You felt me on your nipples, in your mouth. Now you’re going to feel me inside you when you come,” Ann taunts. 

Anne’s torso raises off the bed in pleasure, her skin slick with sweat and all that Ann had swept over her, the evidence of their shared arousal. She moans out— Ann can tell she’s close by the way her face starts to change, her muscles start to clench, and she husks out “Ann, I—“ before falling back to the bed. Ann sees her fingers starting to cramp against her clit because of the speed at which they’re trying to move and Ann lifts her hand toward Anne’s chest, leaning her own body over into Anne’s. She touches her chest again, tickling her left nipple and then pinching it between her thumb and pointer finger, while dipping her head down to lick Anne’s right nipple, lapping at the soft skin around it and gently grazing it with her teeth. With the added action around her breasts, Anne is clearly about to fall over the edge because Ann can feel her insides start to convulse around her finger, the warm heat sending shockwaves through her own body because this is the part she loves, the part she lives for, when the woman becomes putty underneath her, except in this case it’s Anne and she’s sexy and strong and soft and gentle and frightening and _ good _ and as Anne shakes around her and underneath her she thinks it’s the most alive she’s ever felt. She keeps tugging, sucking on Anne’s nipples until she hears Anne call out, “Ann, I—“ and then just repeat “I . . . I. . . “ again and again until at last she feels Anne grip her wrist to stop her movement.

Ann lets her breath calm and climbs up to put her face next to Anne’s near the headboard, Anne’s breaths still heavy. She keeps opening and closing her eyes, as Ann can just make out little flickers of gold that jump out of the brown in her the colored part of her eyes. Anne’s mouth turns into a sweet, sleepy smile as Ann rubs the outer edge of her mouth, her upper lip, to swipe away the evidence of where she’d come all over her face earlier. 

Anne finds Ann’s eyes and mumbles, “God you taste good” toward her. And then she closes her eyes.

  



	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Come closer, baby.

It’s morning time and she’s not in her own bed. Nope, definitely not. She appears to be in a different bed entirely. Someone else’s bed. _ Ann’s _ bed.

Ann.

_ Fuck. _

“You make little ‘hmmm’ noises when you sleep, did you know that?” a soft voice asks her. It has that just-woken-up timbre to it, sweet, but a little scratchy. Anne sort of forgot about that; she never stays long enough to wake up in some other girl’s bed, and she never talks to anyone else — or even herself — before having at least two cups of coffee in the morning. She shoves down the thought bubbling inside her that she could get used to Ann’s just-waking-up-first-thing-in-the-morning voice.

“No, I definitely don’t do that,” Anne counters. She finally stops staring at the ceiling and turns toward the sleepy woman beside her.

Ann’s blonde hair is unkempt, her curls tight in some places and frizzy in others, but Ann is stunning just the same. Her blue eyes are even more doe-like in the morning, apparently, and Anne immediately wonders if she used one of those make-up remover wipe things before getting into bed because although it never seemed to her that Ann wore tons of makeup, her freckles are even more pronounced now, her face even more pure and angelic and flawless. She stifles the urge to trace her fingers across the freckles sprinkled over the bridge of Ann’s nose.

Ann sits up from where she was laying and gently throws one of her legs over Anne’s resting figure to straddle her, and Anne is suddenly transported back to last night. To Ann working herself up and spreading her sticky wetness around on Anne’s body like a damn finger painting. To Ann lowering herself onto, into, all over Anne’s mouth. To Ann dipping her warm center onto Anne’s nipp— _ Good lord. _

“Did I just crash after—” she starts to ask.

“Yep.” Ann gushes, settling herself on top of Anne’s waist and beaming down at her. It’s strangely normal, Ann just casually seated on top of her like this before either of them have even brushed their teeth. After they fell asleep in Ann’s bed. After they masturbated...ish… together. But Ann must have thrown on a t shirt because Anne definitely remembers having last seen her in that pink bra and nothing else, yet now a pale yellow shirt covers her petite frame. It says words on it that Anne can’t make out, a blanket hiding Ann’s body until just above her belly button.

“Rosé. . .” Anne pulls down the covers. “. . . All Day,” she finishes reading. _ Of course. _

“Wait, did you put my boxers back on me?” Anne asks, noticing the familiar train pattern over her legs.

“Yes.” But by now the blanket has been pushed down enough to show her something far more interesting than her own underwear.

“But not your own?” Anne inquires with a smirk as she drags the flat of her fingernails up along the sides of Ann’s upper thighs. Ann’s bare, no-panties-on-them, upper thighs.

“I don’t wear boxers,” Ann corrects her.

“I mean, you put my underwear back on me but didn’t put on your own?” Anne asks in an attempt to clarify.

“No.” Ann declares.

“Why not?” Anne turns her hands over and cups the sides of Ann’s ass. Now that it’s there and uncovered and all.

“I must have forgotten,” Ann says cheekily.

“I’m sure,” Anne coos.

“I suppose I was hoping you’d wake up.” Ann still rests nonchalantly above Anne, her legs comfortably situated on either side of her body, but now she starts lazily thumbing at the edge of Anne’s t shirt, grazing the skin around her belly button.

“Well I should hope you thought I’d wake up _ at some point. . ._” Anne teases her.

“I mean wake up and want to . . .” Ann starts but then she interrupts herself to say, “oh, don’t be glib, Anne!” She pats her palms down against Anne’s stomach to gently admonish her.

“Is that all I am to you, just a piece of meat?” Anne asks.

“Would you be offended if I said yes?”

“Not in the least,” Anne chuckles.

It’s easy. It’s _ too easy, _ this thing between them. Ann doesn’t make it weird; she just accepts Anne. She’s not giving her shit for accidentally falling asleep afterward or begging her to stay now that the sun has come up. She’s just herself. Her sweet, sexy self, who slid Anne’s body — Anne’s probably still very wet and sticky post-orgasm body — back into her boxer briefs as she slept. Oh, and back into her t shirt too, she guesses, because Ann’s still holding the edges of her favorite Death Cab for Cutie shirt that’s once again covering her chest.

“Well thanks for putting me back in my undies. And my shirt.”

“I’m more partial to The Postal Service, but I didn’t want you to be cold,” Ann says, fidgeting with the shirt fabric between her fingers, and squeezing Anne’s body just the slightest bit with her legs.

Anne presses her hands around Ann’s hips and pulls herself up using Ann for leverage. She rests on her elbows, gazing up at the girl above her. Ann smiles innocently back at her and for all the sex and the fucking and the — _ seriously was there titty-fucking last night? _— ridiculously hot things they do with each other, to each other, she still only sees how beautiful and sweet Ann is when she looks at her. She pushes down the lump in her throat again.

“Ann?” She tries to break the moment.

“Yep?”

“Can I . . . I’m sorry if this is gross,” Anne stammers. “Could I . . . can I use your toothbrush?”

Ann looks surprised at first, but the corners of her mouth turn up and a blush washes over her. It’s an oddly intimate request; they both know it.

“Of course you can,” Ann says casually. “Actually I think there's an extra— I bought a two pack last time.”

“Ahh. Even better.”

  
***

Anne stands at the sink brushing her teeth. In Ann’s bathroom. In a worn t shirt and boxer briefs and nothing else. Since Ann’s bathroom is attached to her bedroom and Anne had opened the door back up after she used the necessary, she could see her clearly again, her bare feet on the tile floor and her hair hanging messy around her shoulders.  
  
Ann just watches her. She’s got an unobstructed view from where she sits on the edge of the bed, and for some reason seeing Anne do this simple act of brushing her teeth— an unextraordinary ritual— is making her feel like her heart might jump out of her chest. Anne looks at her, still swishing her toothbrush back and forth, and smiles, and Ann almost forgets how to breathe. This girl, this girl who came out of nowhere to rock her world, who’s currently standing in her underwear with a mouth full of foamy toothpaste, is the hottest fucking thing she’s ever seen in her life. And so Ann is compelled to give her the one thing she’s been holding back.

Anne leans over the sink to spit and then resumes her brushing. When she turns back to Ann, she sees Ann stand up off the bed and reach for the hem of her shirt, slowly lifting it up off the pale skin of her torso. Ann closes her eyes as it passes over her face, clears her hair, and when she opens them again Anne is staring straight at her. Only now she’s stopped brushing.

Probably because Ann’s only 8 feet away from her. And she’s now totally naked. And because Anne hasn’t seen her like this before. And because it’s fucking breathtaking.

Anne turns back to the sink quickly and spits out the remaining toothpaste in her mouth; she doesn’t even rinse, she just uses the back of her hand to wipe her mouth dry.

She walks over to Ann, never diverting her eyes from where they meet. But then she gets close enough to see the thin lines of color peering out from below the curves of her breasts, the green outline of stems that twist into pale purple flowers. They must normally be hidden by the underwire of her bra because she didn’t see any of this last night, but now there’s nothing covering Ann, nothing hiding any part of Ann from her gaze. So Anne can see them clear as day: three little lavender branches that span across the base of her sternum, seated just below where her perfect mounds meet her ribcage, and under them in a light black script, the word _ Lavandula. _

_ God damn. _

  
“Can I put my hands on you?” Anne’s voice is low and uncharacteristically soft.

“You don’t have to ask, Anne.”

“Yes I do,” she says. Ann nods and Anne reaches out to her. She cups Ann’s cheek in one hand, then runs it down her jaw, her neck, her collarbone. She traces across Ann’s chest with her fingertips, she drags them down over Ann’s pert nipples, the tender skin around them, and the dip in between her breasts. She adds her other hand when she arrives at the lavender flowers, using her thumbs to pan out over it in each direction and wrapping around the sides of Ann’s ribcage with her other fingers. She grips Ann, hard, and then lowers her head to press soft kisses across the tattoo, her nose pushing into the flesh of Ann’s bosom. Ann’s breaths are short and shallow, every touch tickling her in the most delicious way.

When Anne lifts her head back up, she looks different. _ Disarmed. _Like she’d tapped into some secret garden that was luring her in with flowers and branches and foliage and whose vines were going to wrap around her and tighten, trap her like a spider’s web, until she was so inexorably stuck she’d never be able to escape. But she also sort of looks like she’d happily go out that way, and Ann feels the arousal pulse between her legs at the idea of Anne being completely under her control.

Ann reaches for the edges of Anne’s shirt and Anne raises her arms, allowing Ann to lift it over her head. They do the same with Anne’s sports bra, and then Anne tugs her boxer briefs down her own legs and steps out of them.

They can’t take their eyes off each other’s bodies.

“You’re—” Anne starts.

“So are you.”

“You were gonna say ‘Naked’ right?” Anne jokes, after a beat.

“I was going to say beautiful, you ass.”

Ann sees the faintest blush spread across her cheeks, and Anne sways her head to the side as if to try to avoid it.

Ann puts both hands on Anne’s face, her palms on her cheeks, and directs it back towards her. She’s not going to let Anne dismiss the compliment.

“You’re beautiful, Anne.” _ You’re so beautiful. _

“Ann—”

Ann moves her hands back past Anne’s face, lets her thumbs press against Anne’s ears as they pass, and she threads her fingers through Anne’s unbrushed hair. Well, she tries, and her fingers catch in the tangles, tugging on the strands just a touch.

“Mmmmm” falls out of Anne’s mouth before she can stop it.

“Kiss me, Anne.” She gently nudges Anne’s head toward her, encouraging her. _ Challenging _ her. And she only has to pull on Anne’s hair once more before Anne is pressing her open mouth into Ann’s. Their lips meet, and then their tongues, and neither can tell who’s leading this because they’re both hungry with passion, with desire, their naked bodies connected by their lips and mouths.

Anne presses their bodies the rest of the way together, their skin sparking at every place it meets like a thousand jolts of electricity. They fit together like a puzzle piece, only this time they can feel the curves and shapes of each other’s figures, the dips of their belly buttons and the tips of their nipples, skin against skin. Anne’s hands press into the flesh of Ann’s ass and walks her back toward the bed.  
  
Anne flips them around before she sits down on the bed, letting herself slide onto it and bringing Ann with her. Once seated, she wraps Ann’s legs around her body, feeling herself get wet at the sensation of Ann’s center spread open and pressing into her bare stomach. Anne wants to feel Ann everywhere, taste her skin everywhere, set her on fire from the inside out, and it seems Ann wants the same from her because Ann dips her head down to pepper kisses across Anne’s naked chest, across the valleys on the edges of her collarbone, and then she licks down and starts lapping around and underneath Anne’s nipple.

“Oh, god,” Anne breathes.

Then Ann’s fingers are tracing down the inside of her thigh between them and Anne adjusts herself to free her right hand as well. They both tease each other, dragging fingers across each other’s abdomen, slipping through creamy folds. Ann kisses Anne again, driving into her center with her middle finger and simultaneously touching her tongue to Anne’s — the contrast of the rough pumping in and out of Ann’s digit with her gentle kisses causes Anne to moan in delight. But then Anne is pressing her own finger against Ann’s entrance, dipping into the velvety warmth of her insides, this secret place that she gets, that Ann gives to her willingly, that now after all these weeks of fucking feels like she has some right to have. It feels like she’s _ hers, _ like they’re _ each other’s. _ Except it’s not just fucking anymore. And as they push into and out of each other — Anne slipping in when Ann pulls out, back and forth like the rocking of a boat on the seas— they nip at each other’s necks and cheeks and earlobes and lips, and _ lips _ and mouths and they’re kissing again and tasting each other and Ann is moaning into her breath. Something about this time is different, is _ more, _because they can’t stop kissing, they can’t break away from each other and neither of them wants to and in this moment, neither of them would let the other go even if she tried.

“Anne?” Anne hears her name whispered in between kisses.

“‘Mmmm?”

“I want to feel you.”

“You have me.”

“Feel us, I mean, together.” She pulls her finger out of Anne’s core and adjusts herself, trying to bear down into Anne’s lap but their legs are in the way.

“Oh,” Anne realizes what she means. She slides out of Ann and grips Ann by the hips to angle her just so, overlapping one of her legs with Ann’s so that they’re weaved together. She knows this will put some of her weight on Ann, but there’s really no other way.  
  
She finds Ann’s eyes and asks silently, and Ann just throws her arms around Anne’s neck, rolling her fingertips around on the nape of Anne’s neck and moving her head back in to press quick kisses to the edges of Anne’s closed mouth. She tickles Anne’s hairline and lazily taps at the gauges in her earlobes with her thumbs, before taking Anne’s bottom lip between her teeth and tugging.

“Please, Anne—”

Anne closes her eyes and lowers herself into Ann slowly, and when the deepest, most carnal parts of themselves touch, sopping wet with their shared desire, Ann lets out a moan so raw it’s almost a prayer. This most intimate connection, their cores fitting into each other, the warmth enveloping not just their lower halves but every atom in their bodies. And when Anne moves her hands to Ann’s ass and begins to rock her, grind her down into where their soaked pussies meet, Ann’s moans get more drawn out, more emphatic. Anne keeps them moving together, sliding into and against each other, raw and real and so fucking hot. They can feel their shared wetness drip down their thighs, and they know what a mess the sheets will be, but neither of them has the ability to care. Anne breathes out in even paces as they stay wrapped up in each other, the sounds of their slick bodies grinding against each other echoing into the room. They’re riding each other, both seeking that blissful moment when the other will come, when the other’s warm wetness will pour out into the core of the other.  
  
Anne seems to realize they likely won’t be able to accomplish that feat. It’s so difficult to come this way, unfortunately, and she starts to shift herself around. But Ann grips her shoulder to keep her in place.

“Baby—” the defeat is clear in Anne’s voice.

“Stay like this. Please.” Ann begs.

“I want you to come all over me, believe me baby, but I don’t think it’s gonna happen this way,” Anne says. “Here, let me change it up—”

But before she can move them Ann is lifting herself out of Anne’s grasp and rolling toward the side of the bed. “Hang on,” she says as she rummages in a little drawer on her nightstand.

When she leans back and resumes her position underneath Anne, she’s holding a little blue vibrator.

“I want us to- can we try to. . . come together?”  
  
Anne studies her face.

“It’s just mine,” Ann explains. “I mean- I haven’t used it with anyone else. Is this okay?”

The desire on her face is so evident, so strong, that Anne can’t help but kiss her again. She doesn’t even bother to break the kiss when she fumbles her hands around between them to take the toy out of Ann’s hands. Then Ann lets Anne’s tongue slip through her mouth, slide around the undersides of her lips, as she adjusts herself to sink back into Anne, to find that sweet spot where they fit so perfectly together and even though they’re doing this for the second time tonight, the feeling of her outer lips meeting Anne’s, their heated centers settling against each other is even more overwhelming this time around because Anne’s breathing into her mouth and licking her lips and lapping at her and because her face still smells like Ann’s scent from the night before.

Anne holds Ann tightly against herself, one hand gripping her lower back to keep their bodies as close as possible, and she wedges the other hand in between their legs with the little toy. She twists the end of the vibrator with her pinky, slowly until she finds a speed that feels appropriate and then she presses it gently to Ann’s clit with a “mmmmm” on her lips.

Ann’s breath hitches and she opens her eyes, finding Anne’s deep brown ones staring back at her.

“I’ve got you Ann.” As she says it, Anne presses herself against the vibrator too, so that while their pussies grind against each other in wet heat their clits also feel the stimulating pressure. They keep rocking into each other, Ann grabbing at the skin at her shoulders, her back, digging in so hard Anne’s sure there will be marks there tomorrow. Anne’s hair falls into her eyes — she hadn’t taken the time to ask Ann for a ribbon or hair tie in any of this — but Ann sweeps it out of her face and tucks it behind her ears. She keeps her hand there in the valley behind her ears, pulling Anne’s face into hers, pressing her open mouth against Anne’s and groaning into it while the sounds of their slickness, their pulsating cores slapping against each other fill the air.

Anne gazes back right into her eyes: the face of this girl who’s somehow managed to unhinge her, who makes her feel wanted and whole and safe, who’s rocking against her faster and deeper with the rawest most bare part of her body, who looks at her with the purest face and who _ sees _ her. The girl whose chest is pink and sweaty, whose slippery wetness covers her groin and thighs like a fucking blanket, whose scent is the most intoxicating thing on the planet. Whose sweet voice is—

“Anne,” she pants. “I’m gonna—.” She grinds down.

“Come.” She grinds down again, hard.

“Inside you.” Harder.

Anne feels her own tidal wave start to crest at the thought of Ann spilling into her body, at the sight of Ann’s eyes starting to squeeze closed, at the pleasurable _ pain _ of Ann’s nails scraping down her back, at the way Ann’s other hand locks into a fistful of hair and tugs it down. And then she feels the heat of all that pours out of the core of Ann’s body and into her own, warm stickiness that tickles every nerve down there, that she wants to pull into herself so that she can soak up every last drop of Ann.

She dips her head into Ann’s chest, wanting to lick and nibble at her lavender, her secret fucking garden of inkstained skin, but all she can do is to breathe out into the thin purple outlines, “I’m— coming—” as she convulses against Ann’s soaked center, and all she hears in return is the sweetest voice she’s ever heard begging her, “come inside me, baby,” before they both collapse onto the bed.

***

After their panting subsides, the silence in the room becomes overwhelmingly loud.

Anne gets out of the bed and finds the clothes they’d discarded earlier. She starts dressing herself, Ann still in the bed, and she sees Ann pull the sheets from under her body and wrap them around her shoulders, over her chest like a cloak.

“I’ve gotta get some errands done before the bar opens this afternoon,” Anne says.

“Yeah, and I should probably shower. Again.” Ann replies.

Ann doesn’t know what’s shifted, what’s now made them being together in this space uncomfortable, but something’s changed._ It was just sex, _ she thinks to herself. It _ was _ just sex. But this time _ wasn’t. _ This time it was something else. Something else that she doesn’t know what to do with, doesn’t know what to think about it. Because if she thinks about it then she’ll have to _ feel _ about it and it’s too scary and too intense and too much. And Anne had wanted to talk about it earlier but apparently she’s not ready to process it either because she’s zipping up her pants and walking towards Ann’s bedroom door.

“See you later, Ann,” she says, and it’s not cold but it it’s not warm, it’s just soft and it sounds like it means more than she’s saying but she doesn’t want to ask what Anne means because then she’d have to figure out how to answer. Because then she’d have to figure out what she wants.

So she just says, “Bye, Anne” in response and watches as the bartender slips through the door.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anne Lister . . . . thinks about things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back, baby.

It was maybe a little much.

Sleeping over? Sharing a toothbrush?

Fucking _ scissoring?? _

And she had come so hard. Harder than she had ever come before, her face buried in Ann’s chest, sweat blurring her eyes and slickness everywhere. Nothing had ever been like that before. Never had she pressed the center of her body to another person’s. Never had she come at the same time as another person. Or even close to it.

And then she had left. She had to go.

Not that she rushed out or that she ran away, but ultimately they both had things to do. Lives to get back to living. Ann had students to meet, she had a bar to open...they couldn’t stay together forever. What scared her the most was the fact that she had wanted to stay in that cocoon with Ann. Leaving wasn’t easy. So she would make it easy for herself.

***

The first few weeks it was easy to fend Ann off. The texts had come in quickly the first few days, just simple things you would expect from someone you had spent weeks fucking - and falling for.

_ Gonna make some lasagna for dinner tonight. Long week, I deserve it. Want to join me? _

Anne had easily dodged that text: the bar was busy, someone had called in, she couldn’t possibly get free, next time, many regrets. It had seemed so simple. Even the invites for sex she thought she was dodging artfully, though, in retrospect it was likely all blundered.

_ I need to let go of some tension. Think of anything that could help me with that? _

_ A bath? Some candles? Wine? _

_ I was thinking of something that was more of a team activity. _

_ Rugby? _

From there it kind of went downhill. Ann’s texts came further and further apart and they were starting to resemble something that Anne might classify as...irritated.

_ Just checking in. Busy, I assume? _

_ Sorry, long week. Bar has been crazy with midterms. _

Around week four, Anne was miserable. Her resolve was nothing if not firm, no matter how awful she felt. She couldn’t do this, though. Ann was...doing something to her. In every blonde girl she saw Ann’s face. In every flower she saw Ann’s tattoos. On every breeze she smelled Ann’s perfume. And every single time she made a Manhattan all she could hear was Ann questioning her, see Ann’s face peering back at her and challenging her to fuck her, the feeling of Ann’s hands down her pants.

Ann had completely unhinged her. She had to regain control over her life. Even if that control looked like her feeling completely on the edge of anger at all times, snapping at everyone within six inches of her and slamming around her bar like a bull.

All of these weeks of stupid, self imposed purgatory led her to this point, jamming a key into the lock of her studio apartment above her bar at 3am after closing, cursing and jiggling it hard to get it to turn so the deadbolt would slide home and she could slide home herself. All she wanted was a hot shower and some sleep, and of course this stupid fucking lock would deny her that as well.

When she gets in, she doesn’t even make it to the shower or her bed. She slinks onto the couch and throws her legs over the side, pulling her phone out of her pocket and setting it on the end table. She replaces it with the novel she’d been crawling through. But after a few minutes, her mind starts to wander away from the pages, and back to the blonde locks of the girl that came out of nowhere. The girl with the peony on her hip, the lavender on her sternum, the vines across her back. She huffs as she rolls her body off the couch, standing up to quickly scamper into her room, fishing something out of her bedside table and returning to her horizontal position on the sofa.

She scoots her body back down and closes her eyes, allowing her thoughts to run loose, in a hungry attempt to recapture the memories. Or perhaps, to create some artificial ones. The feeling of her fingers tracing the smooth skin around Ann’s waist. The look on Ann’s face as she peers down, always trying to find the place where their bodies connect. The weight of Ann’s body above her, underneath her, all over her.

There’s something so freeing about this place, here in her mind, where she can do whatever she wants. To whomever she wants. She doesn’t have to explain, or feel embarrassed, or continually and constantly reconfirm consent. She can just screw them - girls she knows, strangers she doesn’t know, celebrities, movie stars, with her fingers, her mouth, her fake cock, whenever and wherever is convenient. And with those girls, lord knows she fucks them everywhere she can - in cars, in bathroom stalls at bars, the dressing room at Target. In their living rooms while their boyfriends sleep down the hall.

But lately, even though she’s limited only by the edges of her vast imagination, it’s only been Ann Walker. Ann Walker - well, _ dream Ann Walker _ \- who right now, is leaning over her desk to try to spy on what books Anne has been reading lately. She’s standing on her tiptoes, her backside raised slightly and looking fucking delectable in a thin, flowy skirt. And when she stands like this, Anne can’t help but stalk up to her slowly so that by the time Ann realizes she’s there, Anne is already close enough to run her fingers around her hips, to graze the skin where her ass meets her legs, to nibble her earlobes. Ann moans and tilts her head back, bearing her neck for Anne who takes the hint and scrapes her teeth against it. Ann lets her arms fall to her sides and grabs Anne’s legs, cupping the outside of her ass and pulling her closer so that Anne’s body presses her even more firmly into the desk. 

Anne shifts on the couch to bring her left hand to her own leg. She digs her nails into herself on the back of her thigh, pressing her thumb into the side of her thigh in a sorry attempt at emulating what Ann would be doing. With her other hand she pulls the plastic toy out of her pocket and shimmies her hand down her own shorts. Then she lets her left hand trail up her thigh, dragging her nails across her stomach and then slipping in past her waistband.

  
  
Her hands move from Ann’s hips further around her body, pressing against the flat skin of her stomach. She wedges them into the waistband of Ann’s skirt, sliding down slowly to let her fingers graze the patch of hair Ann keeps neatly trimmed. She teases back up Ann’s abdomen, then uses the outsides of her hands to start to lift Ann’s skirt away from her body. She drags it down along with her little lace thong to reveal all of Ann’s backside - milky white flesh spreading up to where Ann’s crop top falls halfway down her back. She extends her arms and brings them back to Ann’s front side, this time not stopping at her curls but surging beyond, below, delicately running her fingers through Ann’s slippery folds, alternating between stroking with the middle fingers of her right and left hands. She curves her shoulders around Ann’s body from behind and presses her lower body even more into the smaller woman’s, with every breath gathering more wetness and sliding it up and down in the valley between Ann’s legs. She feels Ann pushing back against her, warm naked skin grinding against Anne’s pants, and the heat starts to move through Anne’s lower body.

  
  
Anne keeps her head tilted back against the arm of the couch and uses her pinky to increases the speed of the vibrator ever so slightly. She clenches her eyes shut tight and returns to where she’s holding Ann up against the desk. And just as she starts to think about pressing into Ann, about letting her right middle finger slip into her warmth, just as she yearns to feel Ann open herself for Anne, dream Ann flips herself around so they’re face to face. 

Since that last time when they’d been connected - the bases of their bodies fitting together and sliding against each other until they both felt that intoxicating release - since that last intense, intimate time, it’s like even dream Ann makes her hold eye contact, makes Anne look at her, really see her while she fucks her. So now Anne watches as Ann’s hands paw at her, gripping her by the shoulders to try to draw her in. Ann moves her hands down to the waist of her pants, tucking them behind the fabric to press into the skin of Anne’s hips. She slides them across the waistband towards the center, dipping down to inch the zipper down and unclasp the button. She pushes Anne’s pants and boxers down at the same time, grabbing at Anne’s flesh as soon as her ass is exposed. And as Ann’s hands grip her cheeks, Ann tilts her head up and into Anne’s to bite on her earlobe and whisper into it, “make me come.”

Anne feels the warmth start to pool inside her boxer briefs and she breathes out, “ok, yeah, stay here, stay here,” as if to will her own mind to stay the course.

When she returns to Ann, Ann is hiking herself up slowly onto the desk. She scoots back onto it, careful not to disturb the piles of books, and looks up at Anne with her big doe eyes. She spreads her legs wide and her breath hiccups when Anne runs her hands slowly along the insides of her thighs, tracing shapes against her skin. Ann pleads to her with her body language, the look on her face, her pupils wide, and Anne loves this part of the act. The part where the girl is putty in her hands, is begging her to give in. Is offering her pussy up like a fucking birthday gift. And so Anne returns her hands to her present, gently finding the warm wetness in between her folds and waiting as Ann’s body twitches in anticipation. Anne finds herself brought back to that first day - to that first time in the store room - taking Ann like this with her fingers, only this time Ann’s skirt is on the ground and Anne can see every inch of her body, the glistening slick covering her flesh, the way Ann’s body parts for Anne’s fingers to press inside, the way her mouth opens as a reflex when she feels Anne stretch her down below. 

Anne can almost feel the wetness against her digits, the warmth of Ann’s insides against her fingers. She can almost hear Ann’s exhales into the space between them. She keeps rocking into Ann, knowing that Ann will soon be shouting obscenities into the air. But seconds go by and no words are coming from dream Ann, and the heat that was rising in her body lying flat on the couch begins to dissipate.

“No, no, no, no,” she begins to chant into the empty room, her eyes still slammed shut. “Don’t lose it.” She feels the scene - and whatever release had been approaching - start to fade away from her. 

“Say something, Ann” she commands dream Ann. “Say something, say something - ”

But instead of one of those blissed out obscenities, Ann says soberly, “I know you miss me, Anne,” with eyes that only reveal truth, and a hint of sadness. And it’s too much, it’s too direct, it’s too serious. 

Anne’s eyes shoot open. 

She watches the fan overhead spin in an unrelenting rhythm, gently rocking waves of air through the room. She shakes her head side to side, quickly, but her mind isn’t an Etch-a-Sketch. Anne takes a deep breath out and closes her eyes once more.

Ann straddles her, naked, long blonde locks spiraling down her back and over her shoulders. She’s rocking back and forth, her eyes shut but smiling, and the edges of her mouth are curled up in delight.

“Mmmm, okay. This is good,” Anne thinks to herself.

She lets her eyes wander over dream Ann’s body, the pale skin spotted with freckles over her shoulders and the lavender across her sternum. She thumbs at the flower and sees Ann’s back arch behind it, then drops her eyes to look past Ann’s navel and down, down, to where their bodies meet. She sees Ann slip down onto the toy strapped around her legs and watches as she presses her palms down against Anne’s stomach, using Anne’s muscular form as leverage to lift herself back up the length of her shaft. She’s riding Anne, letting Anne fill her up, and with each upstroke she lets out an uncontrollable purr. Ann moves slowly but tenaciously - up and down, up and down - with a face of pure ecstasy, as if the feeling of railing herself raw on Anne’s cock is better than Christmas fucking morning.

And it kind of is. The warmth propels through Anne’s veins, circulating throughout her core and her extremities and then settling back where it started, between her legs. She shifts on the couch and presses the flat of her left hand into her own abdomen as if it were Ann’s. She pushes down and releases, in tandem with the imaginary rhythm of Ann dipping deeper onto her fake appendage. It’s good, it’s _ gooood,_ but it’s still nowhere near the real thing. So Anne breathes out heavily and clenches her eyes closed even more tightly.

She focuses on Ann’s body. Her chest, her perfect curves, her soft, unblemished skin. The way Ann is intoxicating, balanced here atop Anne’s corpus, undoubtedly in the unbridled throes of pleasure. She impales herself again and again into Anne’s lap and this is the part where Anne would normally tell her how well she was doing, how tight she felt, how pretty she looked with Anne’s cock stuffed inside her. And she’d be able to feel Ann getting closer, her pace becoming less steady and less even, her arms and legs beginning to give out. Ann would let her head fall back and her moans get louder and more breathy. Anne feels that familiar sensation start to rise up from somewhere within her, and she reaches into her own mind for the memories she needs to finish herself off. Memories like what shape Ann’s face takes and how her body contorts when Anne brings her so close to the edge. And how Anne’s entire body lights on fire when she sees Ann orgasm around her strap-on.

_ Talk to me _ , thinks Anne to herself. _ Tell me how much you love it _ . She means it only as a suggestion, something to lead her brain into the place she _ needs _it to go right now. But she doesn’t realize she uses the L word until it’s too late. 

“You love being inside me, don’t you?” dream Ann teases her. Anne lets the “mmmm” fall out of her mouth and into the quiet of her living room. She spreads her own legs a little wider on the couch as she feels her insides start to tingle.

“You love taking me like this, don’t you Anne?” she coaxes. Dream Ann already knows the answer before another “mmm-hmmm” escapes Anne’s lips. Anne nods along, her head lifting off the arm of the couch while her right hand keeps the pressure from the vibrator against her clit. She feels the sensation start to overwhelm her, and she strains to keep Ann in the forefront of her mind. Dream Ann keeps talking, keeps _ challenging _ her, and though somewhere in the back of her mind Anne must know where this is going, she’s overtaken by the waves of pleasure coursing through her every particle and so she affirms each of Ann’s taunts, queries.

“You love taking care of me, and making me feel good?” 

“Mmm-hmm,” Anne nods, her breaths short and quick.

“And you love me riding you, and seeing you, and touching you?”

“Mmmm,” Anne pants.

“You love me being with you like this, don’t you?”

“Mmmmm,” Anne can't help but repeat.

“You _ love _ me, Anne” and it doesn’t matter if it’s a question or a statement because it’s too late for Anne to stop the waves ripping through her body, but Ann’s words hit her like a full-speed train flying down railroad tracks and the waves are no match for the steam-engine; they just crash against the sides of the train cars and disperse in different directions, her climax fizzling out like a spark against water but also sort of exploding within her at the same time, and there are too many thoughts running through her head and too many metaphors, and she can’t calm the rise and fall of her chest. And she can’t unhear the words, even though they aren’t spoken and they don’t exist outside of her mind. She desperately tries to find Ann again, to get dream Ann back to the sexy dirty talk, to finish herself off for real, but when she squeezes her eyes shut she only sees Ann in that last split second before she’d walked out of her room a month ago. Ann watching her, seated on the bed where they’d just come while pressed against each other. Ann in a little t shirt, hair a mess, eyes full of longing but hidden behind a layer of despair. 

“Anne?” Ann calls out. She’s waiting for an answer.

Anne’s eyes tear open again. Back in her living room, the ceiling fan keeps spinning as though everything is fine.

“Fuck.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year baby. I know I’ve been bad.

It’s the last Friday before break when Ann finally feels back to normal. Back to not thinking about Anne’s hands every second of the day, back to not checking her phone every time she feels it vibrate or ding, not wondering if and when Anne would text. There’s no point in obsessing over this girl, she reminds herself, and it’s not like they had ever agreed to be anything more than. . . well, whatever they were. Plus, it’s not like she could expect it to go on forever; eventually she feared that Anne would move on. Get bored. Bail.

But try as she might she still can’t shake that tingling in her stomach whenever she remembers - if only she could stop remembering - the timbre of Anne’s voice against her ear, the deliberateness of Anne’s fingertips roaming across her body, the euphoria she reaches when Anne moves inside of her. But it’s done, she tells herself. And she tries - lord knows she tries - to believe it.

So of course it’s that day, that very afternoon that she finally starts to think she’s making progress, that a certain brunette happens to be casually leaned up against the brick wall opposite the door to her office. Ann sees her as soon as she ascends the staircase, as soon as the two other TA’s in front of her part like the Red Sea, revealing Anne in her signature look- black tight-fitting trousers, a button-down with the sleeves rolled up past her elbows, mindlessly scribbling away into a tiny notebook with a faux marbled fly leaf cover. She raises the pen up to her mouth and grips it between her teeth, still focused on the pages presumably covered in scrawl.

Ann watches her for the two seconds Anne spends lost in thought before she notices her, and in those few seconds Ann wonders if this girl has any idea how beautiful she is, how devastatingly stunning she is even with strands of hair fallen out of her ribbon and dangling haphazardly against her cheeks.

Anne slowly reaches to retrieve the pen, and Ann takes the opportunity to beat Anne to the first word.

“I’m not sure what you’re doing here, but I’m just running in and out.” Ann motions to her door and hopes that the resolve in her gesturing masks the shakiness in her voice.

The other TA’s notice that Ann has stopped to speak to someone behind them, and they turn around to measure Anne. Anne doesn’t miss a beat in genuflecting, blinking heavily at them a few times. “Afternoon,” she offers toward them and with one word Ann knows that they’re going to betray her.

She sees one of her TA friends look back and forth between Anne and Ann, then try to cover the knowing smile that creeps across her face.

_Had to be friends with only women TAs, didn’t you Ann?_

“Can we talk?” Anne asks her.

“I can’t right now; we’re on our way out.”

“We’re early still,” one of them says.

“We’ll get a head start, meet us downstairs in a few?” The other TA chimes in.

“Two minutes?” Anne pleads. She offers a warm smile and Ann purposefully avoids sending one back.

“Two minutes,” Ann warns.

“Do you want to…?” Anne gestures toward the open door, the little notebook still in her hand, ink staining the edge of her palm.

“No thank you. Hallway’s fine.” Ann says. “For talking.”

Anne nods, then pushes her body off the wall and tucks the book into her back pocket. She slips her pen into the crease behind her ear and takes a step toward Ann while students move through the hallway around them.

Ann maintains her stance in front of Anne, a safe distance away, with arms akimbo.

“I didn’t mean to catch you off guard. I just wanted to see you in person,” Anne explains.

“I wasn’t sure I would ever see you again.” Ann says, and there’s a sharpness to her voice that she can’t avoid.

“Why?”

“Aside from the fact that you’ve very clearly spent the last 5 weeks avoiding me?”

“I only spent the first three weeks avoiding you -” Anne starts.

Ann snaps, “That’s not true!”

“You stopped texting me back.”

“Because you were never available - you want to fight over a technicality here?” Ann doesn’t intend to sound so defensive, but she can’t help but overcompensate for the hurt she feels rising to the surface within her.

“I didn’t come to argue with you,” Anne says. She takes a slow breath out. “I’m sorry.” And something about the way she says it makes Ann feel like she means it.

“What do you want, Anne?”

“Just to talk. To . . . apologize.”

“It’s fine. I mean, you don’t owe me anything. It was a good time. It’s done. Let’s just move on.” She’s not trying to be particularly short with Anne, but now that Anne is here standing in front of her - well, it turns out those attempts to convince herself she didn’t care if this apology ever came were mostly futile.

“Well that’s sort of why I wanted to talk to - wait-“ Anne interrupts herself. “Why’d you think you’d never see me again though?”

“I guess I figured you’d finally gotten fed up of me.”

Anne scoffs.

Ann’s eyes dart up at her, not sure what to make of it.

“I wouldn’t - I mean that’s not why . . .” Anne smirks, and then appears to remember where she is and what she’s doing.

She takes a step toward Ann in the hallway to close the distance between them. It must be near the top of the hour because more students seem to be rushing through the hallway, not that either of them notice. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I know I was a total ass to you. That wasn’t fair.”

Ann’s surprised by the sincerity.

Anne continues, “The thing is that I run. I’m a runner.”

“Yeah well I figured you ran or worked out or something because of the whole . . .” Ann waves one arm up and down in front of Anne’s torso. “ . . .abs . . . thing”

“No I mean, I run from stuff. My issues. People. It’s sort of my defense mechanism.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, so when I feel my walls breaking down I tend to cut and run. And I know I just bailed and that wasn’t cool. I know none of this is an excuse for treating you like that. I just don’t like feeling like I’m not in control, so I -.”

“Wait, Anne,” Ann interjects. “Stop.”

“What?”

“I need to apologize,” Ann says.

“Why?” Anne asks. She starts to say, “I’m the one that should be apolo-“ but before she can finish Ann cuts her off, stepping past her and into her shared office. It’s empty at the moment, as luck would have it.

Anne is following her into the room when Ann says, “I pushed you.” She paces between the window and the desk, explaining, “I realized it the next day that you were telling me your boundaries and I pushed right past them because I was practically addicted to your body and I didn’t listen to you and I am so so sorry.”

“What are you talking about?” Anne asks, genuinely lost.

“You said you like to take care of yourself. . . by yourself . . . afterward . . . and I - I basically forced you to do it with me.”

Anne crinkles her brow. She finds a spot to stand behind the chair opposite Ann’s desk and waits for Ann to slow her relentless pacing.

“For me. Well, in front of me,” Ann stammers. She starts to gesture with her hands, but can’t work out what to motion, or where. So instead she raises her hands up and crosses her arms tightly around her torso. Her eyes wander around to everywhere in the room, desperately trying to avoid Anne’s gaze which feels heavy on her face.

“Oh,” slips through Anne’s lips as she starts to piece it together.

  
Anne steps towards her, scooting the chair out of the way, and says softly, “Hey.”

Ann meets Anne’ eyes and there’s something striking about how immediately Anne’s whole demeanor has shifted. Everything about her body language and tone evince how much she wants to allay Ann’s worries, and Ann swears she sees Anne raise her hands just slightly before returning them to her sides. As if they might reach up to take her own, comforting her with long, strong fingers, warm palms, soft skin. 

  
“I’m an adult, Ann. I never did anything with you that I wasn’t 100% comfortable doing, okay?”  
  
Ann nods, but she knows Anne doesn’t believe her.

“You never made me do anything I didn’t want to.”  
  
“It’s just- I got the impression that -“  
  
“Ann, look at me,” Anne says and Ann can’t stop the butterflies that flutter through her stomach when she finally takes Ann’s hands in her own. “I know I generally do my own thing after, alone, but sometimes I don’t, so it’s all good.” She waits for Ann to look up at her and Ann prays she won’t be able to hear the sound of her heart beating so fast. She smiles, gently, and finishes, “Everything I did with you was completely consensual.”

  
“Are you certain? Cuz I didn’t know if that was part of-why -“  
  
“I promise. I wanted it too. All of it.”

Ann blushes as Anne’s words sink in. They’re standing close together now. Too close. Anne drops their clasped hands and Ann steps back and sits on the edge of her desk. But then she remembers what happened last time she braced herself on the desk like this. She stands back up.  
  
Ann’s mind starts to wander and she lets herself look, really look at Anne. She’d been trying to keep herself at a safe distance, not paying more attention to Anne than she would to any other person in the hall. But now Anne is here in the flesh, talking to her, confessing that she’d wanted all the debauchery as much as Ann had, confirming that Ann never went past any unwritten boundaries. And it’s in this moment that Ann lets her eyes wander to the top button of Anne’s collared shirt. The unbuttoned top button of Anne’s shirt, tan skin peeking out from between the pieces of fabric, stretching to where the edge of her sports bra is barely visible against her shoulder.  
  
“So no need to be sorry,” Anne clarifies. She puts her hands in her pockets. “But thank you for saying that.”

They let their words linger in the air between them. Air thick with memories of the past several weeks. A chance meeting, an indescribable chemistry between them, the resultant pull she feels toward Anne, like a fish to a worm on the end of a sharp hook.

“Ann, I- “ Anne starts, but the blonde TA peeks her head in at just that moment and simultaneously knocks on the wall next to the open door calling, “Ann! You ready?”

A little piece of her wants Anne to get bossy like she’d done from time to time in their sexcapades, to tell her TA friend off, to implore Ann to come with her instead. But she knows Anne, probably more than Anne wants her to by now, and she knows she’ll be gentlemanly. And maybe this way, if she’s the one walking away first when she can tell Anne has more she wants to say, well maybe Anne won’t stay away so long this time.

“I gotta go.” Ann says. “Girls night out for TAs is a thing, I guess,” she adds awkwardly.

“Have a nice evening,” Anne calls, as Ann follows her friend out of the office. And when Ann is several years away, she can’t help but look back in the direction of her office, just in time to see Anne exhale and drop into the chair, shaking her head side to side.

—

Ann’s Uber pulls up just after midnight. She scoots out of the car, thanks the driver, and turns toward her building when she sees Anne’s figure rising from where she’d apparently been sitting on her front door stoop.

“Good Lord!”

“Ann, I’m so sorry,” Anne says, brushing off the seat of her pants. “I totally didn’t mean to scare you. Though now I realize lurking in the darkness probably wasn’t the way to go on that.” She straightens out her shirt.

“What are you doing here?”

“Well earlier we didn’t really get to finish - I mean, I didn’t feel like . . . like it was all the way done.” She trails off so Ann can barely hear the end of the sentence. Ann steps up to meet her on the porch and notices an empty slurpee cup behind her.

“How long have you been here?”

“Doesn’t matter. Look, Ann. I just needed to tell you. I’m one of those people - I just, I feel compelled to destroy every good thing in my life. Every damn thing that’s good, I push it away, or I fuck it up. I’m working on it. But I’m not there yet. And you are really really good. Really good.”

“Is this the part where you say ‘it’s not you, it’s me?’”

“This is the part where I say I don’t think one hour went by where I didn’t think of you. I kept trying to … push you away but, there you were. So it isn’t you. It’s me. Me not knowing how to… not fuck this up.”

“I’m a runner too,” Ann blurts out.

“Huh?”

“I run. Too.” Ann says it as if that explains it.

“You run from your shit?” Anne asks.

“No, I like to run on treadmills I mean.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I was working off your metaphor. Well, it made more sense in my head.”

“Explain?”

Ann can feel Anne’s eyes trying to find her, trying to understand. But Ann just looks at the floor and tries to find the right words.

“I meant that you don’t have to run from me, from this. I’m not trying to change you or make you be something you’re not. So you don’t have to run from me because it doesn’t frighten me. And if you do run away because that’s who you are, then I don’t mind running alongside you.”

Ann finally looks up.

“You know, if you want me to.” Ann finishes. She takes a slow breath out.

“Really?”

Ann nods. Then she adds, “running alongside, not . . . chasing, though. Okay?”

“Okay,” Anne agrees. And it’s not much, but it feels like progress.

Ann can tell she’s processing, but there’s something sweet behind her eyes, something that tells Ann that Anne really does want to give them a shot.

“I didn’t even ask you, how was girls night?” Anne asks. “You look incredible by the way.”

“Just ok.” Ann blushes, “thanks.”

“Well I’m sorry it was just okay,” Anne says. “Anyone would be lucky to spend an evening with you. Not like that- I mean,” Anne rambles, trying to cover her double entendre. “Not spend the night with you- just… Well they’d be lucky to do that too, but I meant—”

“I knew what you meant,” Ann giggles. “It’s fine. It feels like my night is getting better anyway.”

They exchange a flirty glance and Ann bites the inside of her lip. Anne notices and looks like she wants to stay something. But she stops herself.

“What?” Ann tries to pry.

“Nothing,” Anne covers. She smiles and shakes her head subtly.

“The running thing was garbage wasn’t it?” Ann doubts herself.

“No.” Anne responds firmly. “Not at all. We still need to work on your self confidence,” Anne says matter-of-factly.

“Oh do we?” Ann asks playfully.

“Yes. Tomorrow. At dinner. If you’d like.” And Anne looks at her with the most pleading, hungry eyes she’s ever seen. Eyes that tell her she wants to devour her and that none of their previous meetings have satisfied her. And Ann wonders if her own eyes are giving her away in much the same way.

“It’s about time you took me on a proper date,” Ann chuckles.

A date.

They decide dinner is good. They agree that it’s probably best to go somewhere other than a movie theater. Or a storeroom. Just in case.

*******

It’s easy. Between them, it always has been. Ann’s butterflies come back the moment Anne arrives to pick her up; they swim through her stomach when Anne pulls the chair out behind her when they’re seated; they jump into her throat when Anne excuses herself to use the restroom. And Anne must notice - must also be thinking of that crazy afternoon - because the corners of her mouth turn up and she leans down to whisper in Ann’s ear, “Don’t worry, I’ll come right back.”

She feels Anne’s lips graze her cheek, and between the butterflies in her torso and her heart pounding in her chest, she isn’t sure how she’ll make it through the night.

They skip dessert.

Anne walks them down the block instead. Their fingers graze each other’s, the soft skin on Anne’s hands sends lightning bolts through Ann’s body, and finally Ann can’t take it anymore so she slides her fingers all the way into Anne’s as they enter the store. Anne orders nothing, says she’s not hungry for ice cream, but obediently tastes each of the 4 flavors Ann asks to sample when Ann dangles the tiny spoon in front of her mouth. Ann eventually decides on strawberry and they sit next to each other on the same side of a picnic table behind the store. “Eat some of this” Ann keeps saying, and making little “mmmm” noises each time she presses the cold gelato to her lips. “Please, Anne! You have to help me finish it,” Ann begs. And when Anne leans in to take a bite, she presses her palm against the top of Ann’s thigh and fireworks explode throughout her lower body.

When Ann’s gelato is finally finished all she craves is Anne’s lips, mouth, on her own. So Ann steps toward Anne on the sidewalk and looks up at her with hazy eyes. A shiver sneaks through her body when Anne glances at her lips, then swallows, and Ann tilts her chin up only a fraction of an inch. But it seems to be enough for Anne, who leans down and opens her mouth, smiles, before pressing her lips into Ann’s. She kisses her gently at first and all the ice cream means Anne’s lips taste even more delicious than Ann remembers. Anne’s hands move to the small of her back, fingertips like lightning against Ann’s spine and ribcage. When Anne sneaks her tongue into Ann’s mouth, Ann can’t help the way she leans into the taller woman’s form, can’t stop the quiet moans that fall through the gaps in their kiss, can’t keep herself from grasping, grabbing, gripping at Anne’s elbows.

When Anne pulls away, her eyes are still closed.

“I can’t sleep with you Anne.” Ann breathes.

“Oh- okay,” Anne stutters. She opens her eyes and lets her arms fall away from Ann’s body. “We don’t have to-“

“No,” Ann chuckles. I mean I can’t just sleep with you.” She presses her palm against Anne’s chest. “I really, really want to sleep with you.” Ann runs her thumb against Anne’s bottom lip. “A lot. But I really like you. So I don’t want this to be what it was. I don’t want you only behind closed doors, just for sex. Really mind blowing sex. I want you to know about my life and meet my friends and leave a toothbrush at my apartment and all that stuff.”

A kind smile breaks across Anne’s face.

“We can go whatever speed we need to,” Anne says, and she combs her fingers through Ann’s long locks.

“Oh my god, it’s our first date, I’m being so needy right now aren’t I?”

“You’re being assertive. There’s nothing wrong with that.” Anne says, and she moves her fingers down to the sides of Ann’s thighs, toying with the fabric of her dress. “I happen to like when you tell me what you want.” She bunches the fabric just a touch, raising the dress up a fraction of an inch. Ann’s skin goosebumps at the feel of the cool night air just above her knee. 

“And what do you want?” Ann asks.

“Just you.” Anne raises the dress a hair more, teasing the fabric with her fingers, and Ann feels heat start to pool between her legs.

“Take me home.”

It’s not a question. It’s an order.

Anne smooths out her dress and takes Ann’s hands to lead her down the street. Ann stops her and leans into her ear, “or would you rather take me right here?”

“Hmmmm,” is all Anne answers, but she’s got a greedy grin on her face.

They’re silent the rest of the way home, pausing every few seconds to send each other flirtatious glances. Ann knows she shouldn’t be nervous - it’s not like it’s their first time - but it still sort of feels like it. Except with the added benefit of knowing how amazing it’s going to be.

By the time they arrive, Ann is desperate for Anne’s touch but trying hard not to show it; she can already tell Anne is going to be impossibly slow and deliberate by the way Anne keeps asking her if she wants any wine, any water, any other drink or snack. The only thing Ann actually wants is for Anne to rip her dress off and fuck her on any surface in her apartment, but she takes a deep breath and wills herself to play along.

So they start to undress each other slowly, Anne taking her sweet time and Ann attempting to quell the buzzing sensation spreading throughout her body. Ann unbuttons Anne’s dress shirt and untucks it from her pants, then turns around and palms her blonde hair over her shoulder to reveal the zipper of her dress to Anne. Anne unzips her and lets the dress fall to the floor, then steps over it and toward Anne, now covered only by her lace black bra and thong. She pushes Anne’s untucked shirt over her shoulders, lifts it away from her, leaving the suspenders clasped over her pants with only the sports bra underneath. She doesn’t let Ann get more of her clothes off though; she moves behind Ann and starts tracing the edges of her lace bra, her panties, with delicate fingers. She slides her hands around, across her flat torso, kissing the back of her neck, behind her ear. She turns Ann around and glides her fingers softly, almost too softly, across the ridges underneath her collarbone, and Ann feels like Anne could touch her anywhere and she would feel it everywhere.

When Anne kneels down and Ann feels her warm breath across the tops of her thighs, she worries her knees might just buckle beneath her. She holds her breath as Anne’s tongue crosses her abdomen, follows along the edge of her underwear, and her head tilts back automatically when Anne moves her head down between her legs, first taking a deep breath in through her nose and then peppering light kisses across the lace patterns covering her curls.

Ann loops her fingers underneath the suspenders still on Anne’s shoulders. She tries to lift them up - wanting Anne to come up also - but Anne doesn’t budge from her position on the floor. “Mnn-mnnnn.” Anne denies her, keeping her mouth focused near Ann’s most intimate area - that area inside her that currently feels like it might spontaneously combust. But Anne just keeps kissing her lower and lower over her lace panties, toward the source of her heat. Anne must feel her wetness now because she’s licking over the lace and making little noises, much like Ann had done earlier with each taste of the ice cream.

Ann fingers the suspenders again, locking her thumb underneath it just as Anne attempts to spread her legs wider. She holds her stance firm and forces Anne to stand back up, swallowing as she tries to compose herself after what Anne’s mouth had been doing to her, and where it had been doing it.

Anne starts kissing her higher now, pressing light kisses against her bra covered breasts. She kisses up to her shoulders, her collarbones, licks up the rim of her ear. Ann curls Anne’s whispies behind her ear, then stills to look right into her eyes.

“You’re going too slow, Anne,” she says.

“You’re being impatient, Ann,” Anne counters. “And I thought you didn’t want just sex.”

“I don’t,” she says, in a deliberately angelic voice. Ann brushes her fingers through Anne’s hair, wraps them around the back of her head.

“But when it’s time for sex,” Ann whispers closely into her ear. “I want you to fuck me till I forget my own name.” She fists the strands of Anne’s hair she’s holding and pulls back.

Anne breathes out heavily enough for Ann to hear it. She quickly pulls Ann’s bra and thong off, and Ann hopes this new pace will hold. She picks Ann up, her trousers still held up by the suspenders, but as she carries Ann into her bedroom Ann fastidiously unclips them. Ann digs her arm in between their bodies to unbutton and unzip Anne’s pants, and Anne shimmies out of them as she walks, then steps over them just as they reach the foot of Ann’s bed.

She sets Ann down on the bed, and Ann immediately sits up to pull Anne’s sports bra over her head. When it’s discarded, she slips her fingers into the waistband of Anne’s boxer briefs, dragging her nails against Anne’s skin underneath.

“Airplanes.” Ann smirks.

“Do you prefer something else?”

“I prefer you exactly the way you are,” Ann gushes, and kisses her hard on the lips.

“But right now, I prefer them off.” Ann slides them down her legs, and before Anne can step out of them, Ann pulls her on top of her on the bed. 

When Anne slips her finger through her wet folds, Ann feels her heart skip a beat. Anne rhythmically glides her fingers back and forth between Ann’s legs, slowly up and down, then circling her entrance in a wicked tease. Ann spreads her legs wider underneath Anne’s form, the unspoken permission to go further, deeper, and Anne takes the hint and presses against her heat, rubbing her fingertips through her slickness. Anne grinds her hips against Ann’s, their naked bodies rocking on top of the bed, and for as much as everything they’ve done together it still feels like the first time.

When Ann thinks she won’t be able to last another minute without Anne’s fingers inside her, she puts her hands in Anne’s hair, pulls the ribbon out of her ponytail, and groans, “Please Anne.”

And in return, Anne slowly pushes two fingers into the girl beneath her and exhales, “I missed you, Ann.”

Feeling Anne inside her again is almost too overwhelming.

She can’t help but arch her neck when Anne continues, “I missed your soft lips,” kissing over the corners of her mouth. Her back arches too, when Anne says, “I missed your perfect tits” and licks across her chest and tugging gently on her nipples with her teeth. With this woman on top of her - filling her fuller, deeper with each thrust - she feels the familiar flame rising inside of her, growing closer with each word Anne mutters, with each movement of her fingertips. Anne, this woman who’s trying in her own way to make this work. To give them a real chance. Who sometimes seems so sure of herself and strong - invincible almost - but who in moments like this is raw, exposed, human. Anne’s right arm is pumping faster now, her breathing more labored and her hair falling in strands in front of her face. Ann grips Anne’s back, moves her hands to her ass, to grab at it and pull her as close as possible, hooking her legs around her as well. Beads of sweat pool on Anne’s forehead and her chest, and Ann has the fleeting thought that she’s never felt more safe and more alive and more on fire.

And then Anne speaks, “I missed your tight cunt wrapped around my fingers.”

Ann doesn’t know how much wetness seeps out of her pussy at that moment. She doesn’t know how loudly she whimpers at Anne’s praises, at the fact that Anne loves to tell her how good and tight she is. She doesn’t know how many more times Anne pumps into her, pulls out of her before she’s tumbling over the edge. She just knows that when her climax arrives, she sees stars behind her eyes. She feels weak and dizzy but also like she’s flying, and when she opens her eyes, she sees every tendon flex on Anne’s shoulders, she sees every spec of gold in Anne’s eyes, every muscle ripple beneath Anne’s chest with her inhales and exhales.

Heat soars through her veins, her extremities, and she feels the pulse of her own insides beating against Anne’s long digits inside of her. 

Anne must know she’s coming because she stays inside her, spreads Ann’s legs further by driving her thigh up against the back of her own hand, and she curls her fingers until Ann’s mouth opens, back arches. Moans fall out of her mouth; they turn to high pitched squeals when Anne licks along the underside of her collarbones, scrapes her teeth along the grooves there, while simultaneously pressing her thumb against Ann’s clit. Ann feels herself tighten around Ann’s fingers, the convulsing no longer within her control, and Anne repeats “mmmm,” “mmmm,” as Ann grips her by the ass again. And just as Ann’s toes start to curl, Anne moves her face back to Ann’s and kisses her bruisingly. She tugs on Ann’s bottom lip, sweeps her tongue into Ann’s open mouth, all the while flicking and pushing on her clit down below. Ann can feel their breasts slide against each other, Anne’s pert nipples against her own skin, and without thinking, without even knowing how or why, the words tumble out of her mouth.

“I love you.” She says it with eyes closed.

She feels Anne’s lips smile against her face. And just like that, with two fingers buried deep inside her and Anne’s sweaty, naked form weighing down on her everywhere, Anne pulls her across the threshold.

Anne wipes her hand on the sheets to her side and starts to roll off of the blonde woman beneath her.

“No. Stay.” Ann begs.

And Anne does.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Get on your knees baby.

After the first date, they had a second date, and a third date, and a fourth date. And a fifth date.

And a sixth.

And every time the thought of dating, of calling Ann her _ girlfriend _, of thinking of the two of them as a couple - a monogamous couple - started to freak her out, Anne just thought of Ann Walker’s long blond hair spread out across the sheets underneath her, the way it still smelled like cocoa butter even hours after it dried off from her showers, the way she could braid it nineteen different ways it seemed like. Ann Walker was sweet, and kind, and she just so happened to also be sexy as absolute fuck. And fuck they did.

A lot.

The first time they showered together, Anne took the liberty of tracing every single one of Ann’s tattoos.

She licked across the black and gray peony on her hip; kissed across her ribcage where the lavender branches adorned her skin; sucked the dandelion on her right middle finger all the way into her mouth. And then Ann had turned her body around, pressed her fingertips to the wet tiles, and bared her backside for Anne to take her from behind. If Anne had thought her skin was soft before, it was like velvet with the warm water running over it. She licked, nipped, dragged her teeth along the vines sprawling over her spine. Anne had wrapped her left hand around Ann’s body, massaging her breast and pinching her nipple between her fingers and Ann had let her hand slide around on the back of Anne’s thighs. They’d both chuckled when it was clear Ann couldn’t get a good grip on Anne’s slippery flesh, and they’d only made it a minute after Anne suggested they turn off the water until they’d both gotten so cold they started shivering.

“Fuck this.” Anne had said, opening the shower door and handing Ann a towel.

“How do people legitimately do it in the shower?” Ann asked incredulously.

“I have no idea,” Anne had responded. And once they’d toweled off and gotten warm again, Ann immediately proceeded to unwrap her towel, scoot herself onto the bathroom counter, and pull Anne by the hand until her body was stationed right between Ann’s legs.

  
  


When Ann had said she didn’t expect her to change, she meant it. It had only been two weeks or so, but Ann didn’t seem to be holding Anne to expectations she couldn’t meet. After their third date, Anne said she couldn’t spend the night and Ann didn’t ask why or beg her to stay. She just kissed Anne on the forehead, then the cheek - she’d already kissed her everywhere else that night - and told her she’d text her when she woke up the next morning. But Anne could tell how much Ann was trying, so she’d offered first, “How ‘bout I text you when I get home, so you know I made it safely?”

“I’d like that,” Ann smiled.

“Because I _ am _ going home,” Anne added.

“I trust you, Anne.”

Anne didn’t know if it was the certainty in her voice or the calmness of way she said it or how Ann had looked right in her eyes as she spoke, but she felt safe at the thought of Ann placing trust in her.

So she’d walked back over to Ann on the bed - naked except for the thin bedsheet covering her pale skin - and whispered, “I’ll see you soon, baby.” And as she walked out, she tried not to think about how incredible she’d felt a half hour earlier with Ann’s mouth on her, Ann’s tongue slipping in and around her, Ann’s hands pushing down on her abdomen, inner thighs.

Maybe having a girlfriend isn’t so bad after all. Or maybe Ann Walker is fucking perfection.

  
  


She really was trying this time. Trying to open up, trying to be more understanding, forgiving. Trying to be easier, even though she knew she was anything but an easy person to be with. But she promised herself that she would and could do better. So when she got home, with no reason not to tell the truth, she texted Ann.

_ Home. Have to get up in just a few hours to help out my Aunt. But thank you for another wonderful night. _

She checked the time. 3:14 a.m.

_ And a pretty fun morning. _

Within a few minutes, she had gotten a text back.

_ Would be more fun if you were still here _. And Ann had sent a picture of herself, still wrapped up in the sheet, but with it held so tightly to her skin that Anne could clearly make out the shape of her breasts, her nipples poking little divots in the fabric. Ann’s eyes were closed, a shy smile planted purposely on her face.P

“God damn,” Anne mumbled.

_ I’ll text you as soon as I’m done._ _And after I’ve slept._

_ Good. Because I’m bored already and I want you in a thousand ways._

No, maybe having Ann Walker as a girlfriend wasn’t bad at all.

  
  


They started spending the days together too, when they could. With Ann being off for a few weeks, she had more time free to hang out with Anne when she wasn’t working, and Anne didn’t realize she’d enjoy having Ann around even when she was just running errands for the bar and grocery shopping. But it was sort of nice to have the company. Company that tended to whisper obscenities in her ear at random times, like telling her how many fingers of Anne’s she preferred when they were checking out at the grocery till. Company that liked weaving her fingers into Anne’s as they were walking, no matter how many people were around, no matter who looked at them or how long they looked. Company that didn’t mind if she trilled her fingers along Ann’s hairline on the nape of her neck, twirled strands of her hair between her thumb and pointer finger. Company who she found it increasingly difficult not to screw up against a shelf in the back of the hardware store, not to eat out on top of the hood of her car in the parking lot, not to fingerfuck as they were driving out of the shopping center. So difficult in fact that she couldn’t prevent herself from doing that last one, and well, Ann didn’t seem to mind in the least.

What Ann did seem to mind, however, was the fact that none of their date nights or days seemed to end at Anne’s place. And there were only so many jokes Anne could make about it before she could tell she was testing Ann’s patience.

Floor to ceiling books; trash as far as the eye can see; ghosts of girls past. Ann laughed when she’d said them all the first time. But by the middle of the third week they’d been together - _ together _ together - she really didn’t have a good reason for Ann not to come over, for Ann not to _ stay _ over. And to be honest, the only reason she was holding out on Ann was because she hadn’t done it before.

If Ann came into her space, her sanctuary, would she want to look through all her books? Would she judge her for not having bright art on the walls, or pictures and magnets plastered across the fridge? Would she think it was too industrial, too dark? Would she be embarrassed that Anne lived in a one bedroom above a bar?

Or would Anne have to face her own bullshit insecurities because she knew deep down that Ann Walker wouldn’t care about any of it?

It’s a Sunday afternoon when Anne decides she won’t let her own fuckupery keep her from letting her guard down with Ann. So Anne texts Ann to come chill at the bar since the afternoon was going so slow. And she’d be lying if she said she didn’t spend all morning cleaning up, picking up around her house, just in case Ann feels compelled to join her upstairs afterward.

When Ann arrives, she decides against a whiskey drink this time and instead opts for a gin and tonic. Anne is happy to oblige.

“Is it weird to have me in here now? I mean, all things considered?”

Anne smirks and steps away from the cash register, slinking over the bar to say softly in Ann’s ear, “I’d love to _ have _ you in here again, Miss Walker.”

“Anne! You know what I meant.”

“I did. But now I can’t stop thinking about my way, you know.”

“Well from what I hear, your apartment is only a few yards away. And then I won’t have to worry about those rough barrel edges digging into my ass.”

“Fair enough.” Anne says.

They banter back and forth while a few patrons sip on beers, mixed drinks, around the bar. Anne’s right that the crowd is unusually calm for a Sunday afternoon, and it just makes it all the more unbearable to watch Ann on her bar stool, smiling and flirting with her, knowing that her bed and a dozen other flat surfaces are within a stone’s throw of their current location.

When Ann gets up to use the restroom, she leans into Anne and says, “want to choke me up against the wall for old time’s sake?”

Anne coughs in shock and tries not to draw any attention from her the other customers.

“Watch yourself Miss Walker,” Anne says. “If you’re bad I’m going to have to tie you up and have my way with you.”

Ann can’t keep a straight face. Anne can tell she’s trying so hard to play their little game, but something about Anne’s faux threat makes her whole face change. She looks like a little kid on Christmas morning - sheer joy painted across her face.

“Do you mean it, Anne? You’ll really tie me up?” She’s beside herself.

She’s fucking tickled pink. 

“Only if I think you deserve it.” Anne counters.

And Ann sips the rest of her G&T with a dreamy grin on her face, like her mind is far away.

*****

An hour or so later, Anne’s finally relieved from bar duties and walks over to where Ann sits perched at the bar, giggling with an older straight couple who she apparently made friends with during G&T number 3. Anne casually puts her hand on Ann’s forearm, tells her she’s done whenever Ann is ready. Ann chuckles, then the man and woman give her an approving thumbs up as she rolls off her barstool.

“It was so nice to meet you!” Ann waves.

They wave back amidst a chorus of “you too dear” and “enjoy your night!”

Anne swears she sees the woman wink to Ann, and as much as she’s embarrassed that Ann probably told them they were together, the strange normalcy of it feels sort of cute and comforting.

The only problem is that by the time they get upstairs, Ann is wasted.

She promises she isn’t. She tells Anne there’s no way she’s drunk because she only had two and just a little bit of the third but then she remembers she didn’t really eat enough and she still wants to do stuff with Anne and she slaps Anne a little harder than she means to on the shoulder when she’s trying to convince her to take her clothes off, but none of it sways Anne.

“You don’t always need to be so gentlewomanly with me, Anne.”

Before Anne can spit out, “yes I do,” Ann hiccups. Loudly.

So Anne makes her a sandwich and sits her on the couch with a can of flavored sparkling water. Then Anne walks to her bookcase, slips a vinyl out of its cover and onto her record player, and circles back to the kitchen to put away the peanut butter and jelly, bread, knife. By the time she gets back to sit next to Ann, Ann is nestled into the corner of the sofa, her face tucked into a blanket draped over the side of it, the half-eaten sandwich balanced in her palm. She’s breathing evenly while she sleeps, little moans escaping her mouth with every exhale, like it’s taking her all of the energy in the world to be so damn adorable.

Anne considers leaving her on the couch but thinks better of it. She carries her to the bed, slips her flats off, and pulls the comforter over her, trying to place her there as comfortably as possible. She leaves and returns with her water and Ann’s phone, then leaves them both next to her on the nightstand. She flips the light off. “Goodnight, Miss Walker.”

Then she pours herself a glass of bourbon and sits down to write in the dim light of the kitchen.

  
  


****

It’s almost 4 hours later when her phone dings.

_ Do you have a t-shirt I can borrow? _

Before she can respond, it dings again.

_ And yes, I realize I’m texting you from the bedroom _.

She types back quickly.

_ Of course. Dresser, 2nd drawer from the top _.

Anne can’t imagine why she’d need to borrow a shirt as her dress seemed in pretty good condition when she put her to bed, but damn if she’ll miss an opportunity to see this girl in one of her old tees.

But when Ann Walker steps back into the kitchen, she isn’t wearing a t-shirt.

She’s wearing one of Anne Lister’s white button down work shirts - unbuttoned except for the very last two buttons - and nothing else.

Fuck.

“I found your shirt drawer, but this one was draped over the chair and it seemed like…. like more fun.” Ann looks good enough to eat. She’s holding her hands behind her back, trying to act innocent. The shirt is open enough to reveal the branches inked across her sternum, the crease where her cleavage meets the curves of her breasts, but the rest of her body is tantalizingly hidden.

“Indeed.” Anne swallows as she says it.

“I figured you wouldn’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Anne says. “How’re you feeling?”

“Much better,” Ann replies. “Sorry I peaked so soon.”

“No apology necessary. Do you want me to take you home?”

“Do you think if I’d wanted to go home I would have put this on?”

“Just making sure.” Anne smiles. _ Thank god, _she thinks to herself.

“Or gotten this out?” Ann pulls her hands out from behind her back. She’s holding a balled up black tie. One of Anne’s, obviously.

Anne has to remind herself to breathe. The record player makes the telltale sign that the album is over.

“Can I pick one?” Ann asks. She’s nonchalant, as if she didn’t just request that Anne tie her up by her fucking wrists.

“By all means,” Anne exhales.

Ann grabs Anne’s hand and places the rolled-up tie into it. She moves across the room and starts thumbing through her shelf of records.

“Oh my god,” she laughs. “Why do you have this?” She holds up the soundtrack album for Fifty Shades of Gray.

“Hey!! The music in that film is really good,” Anne argues.

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Ann says playfully.

“You haven’t seen it?” Anne asks.

“No way, I heard it was awful!,” Ann exclaims. _ I Put a Spell On You _ starts to emanate from the record player.

Ann walks back to Anne and holds her arms out, wrists up and close together in an act of submission.

“Well?” She says, and the look on her face is half challenging, half giddy.

“Hmmm," Anne says. Ann’s eyes are pleading, praying; Anne couldn't resist even if she wanted to. But she doesn’t want to.

“Get on your knees, then.”

Ann obeys immediately and Anne gets the feeling that Ann will be oh so perfectly subservient to her demands.

With Ann on her knees - her bare knees against the wood floor of the kitchen - her adoring stare, looking up at Anne like she’s a fucking god, and her arms outstretched which pushes her cleavage together like a damn renaissance painting, Anne has to remind herself to go slow. That they’ve never done this before. That even with Ann practically holding rope in her teeth, that she needs to be careful, and talk through everything.

Ann must see the deliberation on her face.

“Do you not want me like this?”

“Fuck, Ann. No. I definitely do. I’m just …”

Ann blinks a few times in succession and Anne thinks her skin might ignite.

“I just want to be careful with you.”

“You won’t break me,” Ann declares. “I’m not fragile.”

“I know. Careful isn’t the right word. I need you - If we’re gonna do this - I need you to be even more… articulate with what you want and don’t want. Specific. You know what I mean?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Ann nods her head, an apt pupil.

Anne knows if she can get a clear picture of Ann’s boundaries it’s going to turn both their worlds upside down. She feels a little buzzing in her stomach, working its way into her throat. Nerves_. What’s happened to you Anne?, _she wonders to herself.

“You’re not drunk anymore?” Anne asks. She needs to be sure.

“No ma’am.”

_ Oh god. _

She finds her composure. “Right,” Anne says. “Well I think I’m ready for that glass of wine.” She needs a fucking minute. “You, stay,” she commands. “Be thinking of your hard boundaries. Anything that to you is absolutely off limits. Yes?”

“Yes, Miss Lister.”

_ Fuck. _

Anne takes a few sips of her merlot. Of course she’d never allow herself to be out of control when she did this. Not even buzzed. But this girl is something else, and a couple sips of wine seem, well, necessary at the moment.

When she returns - a glass of red in her hands that she doesn’t actually intend on finishing, but she damn well intends to look the part - it’s clear Ann has indeed been considering her boundaries.

“Well, Miss Walker?” Anne inquires.

“I think, ties are good. Neck ties, I mean. Not like plastic ties or zip ties.”

“Fair enough,” Ann concedes. “And what about rope?”

“Rope is okay.”

“Very good. Handcuffs?” Anne asks.

“Do you have some?” Ann replies immediately. “Are they real? Is there a key?” Anne can tell her mouth is trying to catch up to her mind.

“There is a key, but we won’t use them tonight. I’m just interested for the future, Miss Walker, in case you enjoy yourself this evening.”

“Okay,” Ann mumbles, biting her lip. She’s still on her knees, though she’s sitting back on her legs and her arms aren’t outstretched anymore.

“Good.” Anne circles her on the kitchen floor. She takes one more sip of her wine and sets it on the counter. “Do you have any problem with strap-ons?”

“No. Not your usual, I mean.”

“Duly noted,” Anne says. “We won’t use other toys tonight, for the first time.”

“Okay, Anne.”

“Miss Lister,” Anne corrects her.

“Miss Lister. Ma’am.” Ann replies.

“Good girl.”

“Anything I’m not allowed to do with my fingers?”

“No.” Ann says.

“Or my hands? Fists?”

“No ma’am.” Ann looks right at Anne and nods to reassure her.

“Well, then. How do you feel about being blindfolded?”

“Blindfolds are fine,” Ann says, trying not to smile.

“Perfect. We’re nearly there.”

Ann looks pleased. Excited.

“We’ll use colors, like a stoplight. Green if you’re comfortable, good. Yellow means we’re approaching a boundary and I’ll proceed cautiously.”

“Okay,” Ann says.

“Red means I stop, no questions asked. You say ‘red’ at anytime and I take my hands off you, I stop what we’re doing, no matter what.” She stops her pacing and kneels down to put her face right in front of Ann’s.

“Is that clear?” Anne needs to know Ann is on her same page.

“Yes. Red means stop.” Ann confirms. “And shall we have a safe word?” She asks, Anne still kneeling with her on the kitchen floor.

_ She’s done her homework _. “Yes, of course,” Anne says. “Do you know what you’d like it to be?”

“Tuxedo.” Ann says it confidently.

“Tuxedo,” Anne repeats. “Very good. Now, Miss Walker, do you need some water or to use the restroom?”

“No ma’am.” Ann lifts herself back up off her calves so that she’s kneeling with perfect posture, her hands hanging by her sides.

“Well then Miss Walker, if there’s nothing else…” she walks around Ann slowly until she’s directly behind her. “... I’m going to tie you to my bed and spread your legs apart …” She leans down next to Ann and moves her mouth flush against Ann’s ear. Then she whispers, slowly, “... and fuck you until I’m good and satisfied.” She feels Ann shiver against her skin. She stands back up.

“And you’re going to be a good little girl and take it.”

*****

By the time Anne gets her out of the button down and ties her by the wrists to the bedposts, Ann is wetter than Anne’s ever seen her. She could tell Ann was into this; Ann offered up her wrists as soon as Anne took the second tie out of her dresser drawer. Ann smiled nervously as Anne gently flipped the fabric back and forth around her skin, tried to stifle her own giggles with deep breaths as Anne bound her to the headboard. For her part, Anne has remained stoic and determined. But now that it’s time to spread her legs wide, let Anne bind them individually to the cross posts, Ann is glistening like fresh snow sparkling on a fucking mountain top. A thick sheen coats her upper thighs, the patch of hair between her legs, and the most surprising thing is that Ann doesn’t seem to be embarrassed by it at all.

“Ties okay? Too tight?”

“They’re okay.”

“Color?”

“Green.”

_ More like bright green, _ Anne thinks to herself.

“Very well. I’m going to fasten the ties on your ankles to the posts now.” Anne loops the tie around the post, knots it, loops it again and pulls it taut. _ Thank god for four post beds. And for willing partners. _She repeats the motion on the other side. And just like that, Ann Walker is spread out for her, naked and under her complete control. A snack she can’t wait to savor.

“I’ll be right back.” She steps into her closet to change. Baggy blue jeans are the first thing she sees so she puts them on. Well, with a little something extra.

She leaves on her white sleeveless undershirt; the one she’d been wearing under her button down work shirt that Ann so marvelously modeled for her earlier. She steps back out of the closet.

_ This is some serious Fifty Shades of Gray shit, _ she mumbles, realizing her outfit.

Ann strains to lift her head over her body, to get a view of Anne after she returns to the bedroom.

“Color?”

“Green.” Ann’s voice is hoarse when she says it, dry, and Anne takes it as a good sign.

Anne scoots her body onto the bed. She feels the bed move as Ann’s breaths get heavier and heavier. Anne runs her fingers along the insides of Ann’s legs, touching the sides of her calves, inner thighs. She teases the skin at the base of Ann’s body, slick already, and her soft touch makes Ann twitch subtly. Anne eases up and moves her fingers through Ann’s curls, over her abdomen and up to her navel. She tickles the skin there while Ann’s stomach raises and falls under her touch. She presses her palms upward, traversing Ann’s pale flesh until she reaches the lavender, Ann’s tits, but in doing so she has to position her body right up against Ann. Anne leans against her just barely as she starts toying with Ann’s pink nipples and Ann fights to try to grind down into Anne’s crotch. Her bound legs prevent her from moving much, but Anne takes pity just enough to give Ann a taste. She thrusts slightly between Ann’s open legs, and Ann must instantly register the shape pressed against her because she groans and flexes her legs even though they’re tied firmly to the bed. She tries to lift her head up to look at Anne’s pants.

“Tsk tsk.” Anne shakes her head.

Ann whines and throws her head back on the bed.

“Poor Miss Walker. All wet and not ready to be filled up yet.”

“Anne,” Ann breathes it out.

“You will address me as Miss Lister,” Anne exclaims, her voice raised. “Or you will get nothing.”

“Yes ma’am.” Ann licks her lips and exhales deeply while balling up her fists.

Anne readjusts her body and brings her head down between Ann’s knees. She takes a long breath in through her nose. “You smell good enough to eat.”

“Oh god,” Ann groans.

Anne nibbles along the insides of Ann’s thighs; she licks up the creases of her folds, and licks one broad stroke upwards across her entrance, like a paintbrush over canvas. She nips at Ann’s skin, sweeps a few more times up and down over her heat, never as direct or with as much pressure as she knows Ann wants. Ann is grunting now, little noises escaping her lips with each of Anne’s touches. And as Ann becomes more exasperated, Anne pulls her mouth back, whispering “mmmm,” licking her lips as though she just finished an enjoyable meal.

“You taste as good as you look,” she says leaning over her body and beginning to lick around her nipples. She bites them, gently, one at a time while the blonde woman twitches beneath her.

She knows Ann won’t make it long at this rate so she returns to her kneeling position between Ann’s legs. She presses the strap-on - still covered by Anne’s jeans - into Ann who responds with quick breaths.

“You’re not to move, do you understand?”

Ann nods her head, and Anne moves each of her hands to the ropes at the footboard, releasing them with one swift tug. The knots at the posts slip off and into piles on the bed, while the ropes around Ann’s ankles stay put. Ann keeps her legs still now they’re no longer tied. Anne resumes her pressing into Ann; she lifts her body up and down to rub the shape of her cock through Ann’s folds.

Ann moans grow increasingly louder.

“Miss Lister, I don’t know how long I can make it with you doing that.”

“You’ll make it as long as I tell you to.”

Ann releases a whimper, high pitched and emphatic.

“Surely you can wait until I give you my cock.”

Ann starts to move her legs, to try to grasp at Anne’s form with them.

“Ahh, ahh,” Anne says, turning to take them and bend them in front of her. She ties the ends of the rope together with plenty of slack, then raises them up to lift them over her body - pausing to admire the uninhibited view of Ann splayed our before her. She says “there,” and picks up where she left off.

“Surely you can be a good girl and let me unzip my pants…”

Ann nods enthusiastically. Anne unzips her pants.

“Surely you can at least let me slip inside you…” Anne pushes her jeans down to just below her ass, revealing the purple dildo, the leather straps sitting flush against her skin.

Ann strains her head to see.

“Because I seem to recall you being incredibly … eager … for my cock, isn’t that right?” She rubs the rubber shaft against Ann’s wet heat.

Ann keeps nodding.

“Yes, I couldn’t forget feeling how nice and tight you are, Miss Walker.” Anne positions the tip at her entrance.

Ann moans with her mouth open and squeezes her legs behind Anne’s back.

“How good and wet you get for me,” Anne says, circling Ann’s hole but denying her what she craves. “How positively glorious you look when I stretch you open.” Anne dips in, tortuously slow, and only the tip.

Ann bucks her legs.

“No, Miss Walker.” Anne lifts Ann’s legs until they’re resting on her shoulders.

“Color?”

“Mmmm,” Ann says, apparently not hearing her.

“Color, Miss Walker?” Anne yells.

“Fuck. Green! Green,” she pants.

“Is this what you’ve been waiting for?” Anne teases.

“Yes ma’am.”

“For me to tie you down?” Anne pushes her cock into Ann’s pussy, steady and slow.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Spread your legs as wide as I want?” She pushes her cock deeper inside Ann.

“Uh-huh.”

Anne clicks her tongue. “Yes,” she commands. “I can’t fuck you if you don’t use your manners, Miss Walker.”

Ann nods desperately. “Y-yess maam.”

“Punish you when you’re bad?” Anne continues, over the sounds of Ann’s labored breathing.

“Then fuck your tight hole until you can’t see straight?”

Anne bottoms out. Ann’s eyes close.

“And you have no choice...” Anne pulls out and thrusts back into Ann.

“But to take...” she thrusts again. Ann’s body starts to comvulse under Anne, her squeals getting louder and her mouth open wide.

“Exactly...” Anne thrusts hard while pushing down on Ann’s abdomen, in an attempt to get even deeper inside her.

“What I give you.” Anne can feel Ann clenching and tightening around the strap on so she digs her fingernails into Ann’s ass; she switches to short, quick thrusts even deeper in Ann’s cunt.

And when she sees on Ann’s face and Ann’s body that she’s about to topple over the edge, she says devilishly, “You’re an excellent fuck, Miss Walker.”

It’s enough to make Ann’s muscles flex, her neck and back arch up, her wetness spill onto Anne’s thighs, while she breathes out, “I’m coming,” once, twice, thrice into the dim light of the bedroom.

And as soon as Ann’s breathing becomes steady again, Anne unties her arms from the head of the bed, then gently unloops all the neckties from Ann’s appendages. She kisses her forehead, boops her nose, as Ann curls into a little ball and tucks herself under the covers. Ann still looks like a kid on Christmas morning - well, a kid who, after having unwrapped all her presents, is utterly and completely satisfied.

“Next time, you’re going to ask my permission before you come,” Anne says, switching back into her role as dom.

“Okay,” Ann giggles. “Next time.” Her smile is evident in her voice, even though Anne’s already turned around to head to the bathroom to clean up.

_ No, _ thinks Anne to herself. _ Maybe having a girlfriend isn’t bad at all. _

_ Maybe having little Miss Ann Walker is pretty fucking spectactular. _


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yes I've been gone. Yes this is the end. 
> 
> Nothing good lasts forever baby.

“Ow!” Ann winces.

“Oh come on,” Anne teases. “Haven’t you done this loads of times?”

“Yes, but some areas are much more sensitive than others,” Ann answers, playfully tickling the back of Anne’s knee with her free hand. She’s half-seated and half-reclining, her back leaning against the bench of the chair in this tattoo parlor, angled at a diagonal position so that her other arm is positioned correctly for the tattoo artist to work with. At present, said tattooist is inking a curved black line on the pale skin of the inside of her forearm, just underneath the bend of her elbow.

“And you never quite get used to the feeling of needles buzzing through your skin repeatedly, even if you’ve done it before,” Ann continues.

“I suppose,” Anne says from where she stands, close to but just behind Ann so as to stay out of everyone’s way.

“Not that you would know,” Ann mumbles.

“Do you have something you’d like to say to me Ann?” Anne asks.

“Only that if you’d ever gotten a tattoo, you’d know . . . but you haven’t so you don’t,” Ann replies. The tattoo artist lets out the faintest huff, but with no one else in the tattoo parlor right now, Ann is positive that Anne hears it.

“You love to hold this over my head don’t you,” Anne challenges her.

“I just think you’ve got a lot of very tan, very taut skin, and that even though I know you’d probably never go for a sleeve, I _know_ that a little teeny tiny tattoo would still look pretty good on you, babe.” Ann turns to the tattoo artist, another lesbian who looks at least a few decades older than them, and says, “don’t you think?”

Axel responds without hesitation, “oh absolutely.” Maybe it’s her turnkey response - always looking for more customers probably - but Ann hears the sincerity in her voice and hopes Anne does too. Axel herself has tattoos running up and down her toned forearms - a patchwork quilt of text and art, little icons and drawings, with stars and diamonds peppered throughout. A perfect mural of a life well-lived, a life still being well-lived. She takes off one of her plastic gloves, discards it, and readjusts the headlamp strapped to her head, rubbing at her skin underneath it. Ann loves how nerdy she looks in it, like a coal-miner or a professional cyclist, when everything else about her screams how big of a badass she is. Ann’s been coming to her since her first tattoo, a small gardenia on the inside edge of her left heel, one that Anne hadn’t even noticed until after they’d already been dating for a while. Ann had wandered into this tattoo shop less than a month after she turned 18, noticed the faded photograph of “Dykes on Bikes” from some long ago pride parade framed in the center of her station, and decided Axel was the one she’d go with. And that was before she saw how delicate and precise and perfect her flower drawings were.

“Well, I still haven’t decided what I’d get.” Anne says.

“Sure,” Ann says. She turns to Axel and immediately follows it with a matter-of-fact, “she’s afraid of needles.”

“That’s false,” Anne exclaims. “I am not.” Ann twists her head slowly to meet her eyes, making sure not to move too abruptly given the circumstances.

With Ann’s eyes now glaring at her, Anne continues, “You watched me get a flu shot a few months ago!”

“I watched you fidget in your seat and ask one thousand questions and then squeeze the hell out of my hand when the needle finally penetrated your skin, you big baby.” Ann hears Axel stifle a laugh, and she deliberately avoids looking back at her lest she start laughing too.

“You’re lucky you’re stuck in that chair right now,” Anne counters. “Gives me a long time to decide what I’m going to do with you.”

Axel’s chortle falls all the way out of her mouth this time, and both Anne and Ann turn toward her to ask “What?!” They say it simultaneously.

“You might as well get the fucking tattoo, Anne - er . . . Taller Anne,” Axel says. “You two basically eye fuck wherever you go, every other word out of your mouths is foreplay, and you have the same damn name. That’s some seriously gay shit, you guys.”

Anne scoffs. Ann furrows her brow.

“That’s not—” Ann starts to push back, but Axel chimes back in, laughing, “You’re the most-lesbian lesbian couple I’ve ever seen, like Bette and Tina driving around in a fucking Subaru.”

Anne and Ann laugh at the image, and Axel just shakes her head and smiles. “So, get a fucking tattoo for - uhh . . . Smaller Ann, Tall Anne.”

“Yeah, Tall Anne,” Ann teases her. “Get a _fucking_ tattoo babe,” except she whispers the word “fucking” even though Axel is the only other person around. Ann knows she probably shouldn’t be challenging Anne like this - on account of that she’s too competitive for her own good sometimes - but if Anne’s taught her anything over this last year it’s that she should always do the things that make her feel alive. Hadn’t the therapist encouraged her to _be where her feet are_, or something like that all those months ago? She’s actually come a decent way, now that she thinks of it, and she smiles to herself wondering what lessons she’ll learn with Anne in the next year, and the one following, and all the ones after that.

She looks to her Tall Anne, a grin of faux-annoyance plastered across her face.

Ann whispers to her flirtatiously, “It’d be really hot.” And she tries to look as innocent as possible when Anne’s expression turns to mischievous consideration.

“Alright,” Axel exhales, snapping off her other plastic glove. “I’m gonna go take a quick smoke break. If you really want something, I don’t have any appointments for another 2 hours. Otherwise I’ll clean Ann up and y’all can pay.”

The Ann(e)s nod.

“No pressure,” Axel says, passing them on the way to the front door of the shop.

“She’s right,” Ann says when the tattoo artist is gone. “No pressure, babe. I do think it’d be hot but if you don’t want to that’s okay too.”

“Look at you- all jokey smiles now but you were a bit of a bully back there,” Anne says.

Ann lets out a series of short, choppy laughs in disbelief. “Me? A bully? You’re joking. I can’t make you do anything.”

“Oh,” Anne starts. “You get me to do _lots;_ don’t sell yourself short.”

The apples of Ann’s cheeks turn a shade pinker. She turns her body in the chair, lifts her arm off the table. “Well, what do you think?” she asks Anne.

Anne takes a step toward her, now with a better view of the tattoo halfway up her arm, just below the crease of her elbow. It’s a little black ribbon, tied in a casual bow. The corners of Anne’s lips turn up, and Ann swears the edges of her cheeks blush just the tiniest bit too.

“It’s sexy,” Anne says. “Really sexy. I still can’t believe you’d get something other than a flower though.”

“It is a first for me,” Ann says. “But your ribbons are so - I don’t even know how to describe it - the ribbons when they’re in your hair, it’s so . . quintessentially you. So I guess it was easy to make an exception.” Ann tilts her chin up, licks her lips, and Anne gets the message easily. She steps into her space, leans down to get on Ann’s level, and kisses Ann — and with one kiss, all of a sudden it’s clear to Ann what this means to Anne, how significant it is, how permanent it is, and Ann kisses her back with even more passion.

After a minute, Anne pulls back and asks her, “So what would you have me get?”

“Hmmm,” Ann says. “Well, I got your black ribbon. You could get my —”

“Oh god, not your lace underwear, just no.” Anne interjects.

“Anne! That’s not what I was going to say,” Ann says. “Although it’s pretty cute that it’s the first thing on the list of stuff that reminds you of me.”

“Well, historically, it’s been present a lot. Or, you know, _not_ present.”

Ann blushes again.

“So what were you going to say?” Anne asks.

“I was going to say one of my flowers,” Ann answers. “But actually now that you mention it, you could get laceflower?” Her voice turns up at the end as it only occurs to her too late that Anne may really not want a flower, of all things, tattooed on her body. But Anne doesn’t seem to hate the idea - or at least if she does, her face isn’t showing it.

“Laceflower,” she hears Anne repeat to herself. “That’s the one that looks like —”  
Before she can finish her question, Ann pulls out her phone, types something quickly, and shows her a picture.

“Hmmm. I like it. Just— just the outline though.” Anne suggests.

“Yes, definitely. In black and white.” Ann adds.

“Where?” Anne starts looking over her own body as though she’d never seen it before.

“Right here.” Ann stands up out of the chair and drags her finger softly against the top of Anne’s shoulder, above her collarbone.

Anne says nothing. And it’s not that often anymore that Ann can’t tell what she’s thinking, like back in those early days when they hadn’t really learned to communicate yet and Ann hadn’t memorized what all her expressions meant. But now, in this moment, Ann really has no clue what could be going through her head.

“What are you thinking?” Ann finally asks.

“I’m thinking that I spent so long believing I was giving _you_ some sense of adventure. But honestly it’s the other way around.”

“God Anne, when did you become such a sap!?” Ann says, her face beaming from ear to ear. “I can’t take you anywhere.” She nudges Anne with her other elbow, the arm that doesn’t sting with that brand-new-tattoo burning sensation, and then centers herself in front of Anne. She puts her hands on the taller woman’s hips.

“I guess tattoo parlors really bring it out in me,” Anne says.

“So you’re going to do it then?”.

“Well I can’t very well let _‘Small Ann’_ be the tougher one,” Anne says, pulling Ann towards her body as much as she can without bumping her arm. She speaks with that timbre in her voice that Ann can’t seem to resist, and before she knows it, Anne is pressing her body into hers, warmth spreading through her veins when she feels Anne’s strong fingers sliding up the small of her back.

Anne kisses her, and even though they do this all the time now — every morning, last thing before bed, and so many times in between — it still makes her heart flutter to feel Anne’s lips on hers. It still drives her crazy, thinking of the things Anne says to her. It still makes her wet, thinking of the things Anne _does_ to her.

Anne pushes into her more, slipping her thigh into the space between Ann’s legs. She tugs on the edge of Ann’s dress, the thin fabric separating her from where Ann wants her most. She closes her eyes and nuzzles her cheek against Anne’s.  
“Talk to me,” she whispers in Anne’s ear.

Without missing a beat, Anne whispers back, “God you look good.” Ann tosses her head back, smirking.

“I’d take you right here if I could.”

“Mmmn,” Ann breathes.

“Flip you around, slip my hands under this little dress.” She grazes the backs of Ann’s legs, dragging them toward her ass at an agonizing pace. Ann lifts her un-inked arm up, tangles her fingers through Anne’s hair. She smiles when her digits reach Anne’s ribbon, and she starts to toy with the thin piece of fabric just as —

“Alright lovebirds, break that shit up,” Axel walks back in saying. “You know this place can’t get desecrated with you two swapping spit and whatever else you’re planning on swapping.”

They can’t help but laugh when they look at each other.

***

In the front seat of Anne’s car, they sit, nowhere in particular that they’re supposed to go, nothing that they need to do. They’d had to park halfway up the block when they arrived, in the back alley behind the vegan donut shop Anne likes to frequent on the weekends, which— fortunately for them — doesn’t stay open past 6. Anne had taken her denim button down shirt all the way off and then slipped one sleeve of her tank top, the strap of her sports bra over her arm so that Axel could tattoo her shoulder without having to battle her clothes.

“So, I’d say this is the gayest shit I’ve ever seen,” Axel had said, “but honestly I’m just thankful the tattoos themselves aren’t matching.” Both Anne and Ann had scoffed at that, relieved to not be that cliche.

And Anne had grazed Ann’s fingers with her own as they stood at the counter watching Axel count a stack of twenty dollar bills, and then she had thread those marvelous fingers through Ann’s, clasping tight when they exited the shop. Holding Anne’s hand always felt like a jolt of electricity, like every time she connected with Anne she was transferred a tiny spark of her vigor, her spirit. But tonight she felt something stronger in Anne’s touch — it was something like longing, that feeling she sometimes got that deep under all her layers, Anne desperately wanted, needed to be loved. And every once in a while — when they’d shower together, or when she’d notice Anne watching her while she read a book on the couch next to her, or just in the middle of the night when they’d lie awake together while the rest of the world was asleep — she’d get the feeling that Anne knew just how much Ann loved her. And that Anne loved her back the same way.

“It’s permanent you know,” Ann says, seeing Anne shift to try to see her new tattoo better in the reflection of the little mirror on the sun visor.  
Anne flips the sun visor up and looks directly at Ann. She motions between them. “Good, because so is this.”

Ann smiles sweetly, but then Anne is tugging on her arm, gesturing to her own body and luring her across the console. Ann giggles but doesn’t put up a fight. She lands, bridal style across Anne’s lap, and Anne takes the opportunity to plant quick kisses up her neck, across her cheek. She brings her hands to Ann’s face, continues kissing down her jawline and she slows down when she meets the corners of Ann’s mouth. She parts her lips to kiss Ann and Ann closes her eyes, but instead Anne whispers, “I want to feel you, baby,” and Ann feels the area between her legs begin to throb.

“Aren’t we too old for this?” Ann giggles again. But Anne is already maneuvering them so that Ann straddles her, her legs bent at the knees. Before Ann can say anything else, Anne is digging her hands underneath Ann’s dress, bunching up the fabric, and Ann hiccups when she feels Anne’s hand find the front of her lace panties.

“Do you want me to stop?” Anne teases.

  
Ann closes her eyes and shakes her head.

Anne must notice that Ann’s eyes are now closed because she doesn’t say anything; she just gently traces her fingers along the fabric of the lace thong where it covers Ann’s curls. She moves her fingers up and down, then side to side, and when she digs her fingers ever-so-slowly underneath it, a moan escapes Ann’s mouth.

“Oh, so you don’t want me to stop?” Anne coaxes.

Ann shakes her head again. Anne pushes her fingers deeper under the fabric of Ann’s thong, and Ann’s head falls back as a reflex.

“You know I need to hear you say it, baby.”

“I want it,” Ann blurts out. The way Anne’s fingers continue to snake through her curls, tantalizing her soft skin, it’s fucking maddening.

“How bad, baby?” Anne asks.

“I want you.”

“Yeah?” Anne says, dipping her fingers further down toward Ann’s heat.

“I — I want you,” Ann stammers. She feels Anne’s warm fingers graze her entrance, and she wonders if they’re already soaked given how turned on she is.

“Tell me.”

“In— inside, baby please,” Ann begs. Anne’s fingers press against her entrance.

“You want to see?” Anne asks, and she starts to push Ann’s skirt back without waiting for her response.

“I need you to be good, Ann, because anyone could just walk by out here.” Anne says it with a resonance in her voice like she’s enjoying this too damn much. And even though Ann knows that the donut shop is closed and the alley’s dark and they’re parked in such a position that no one would be walking by for any feasible reason right now, it’s true that they’re in a parked car - a parked car without tinted windows. And she’d be lying if she said the thought of her and Anne getting caught wet-handed didn’t make her feel hot and tingly all over.

When Ann opens her eyes and looks down, she sees Anne’s strong hands: one resting on her hip, the fabric of Ann’s dress wadded up in her palm, and the other disappearing in the space where Ann’s legs meet. Ann can see her palm, can see her pointer finger and ring, pinky fingers curling in, can see her middle finger disappear into the base of her body. And when Anne enters her, pushes her long digit into Ann’s throbbing pussy, she can’t help but open her mouth so that a guttural moan can fall out of it. Anne seems to enjoy it too, because she says “mmmmm” into the space between them and curls her lips up in a satisfied grin. Ann just watches herself get fucked, watches as Anne’s arm and wrist increase the pace. She watches Anne’s finger draw out of her every second or so, each time wetter than the last, every time returning to refill her, reclaim her. Finally Anne adds her ring finger and Ann is overcome by the stretch.

“Fuck,” she hisses, now starting to grind herself up and down against Anne’s hand.

“You’ve taken much more of me than this, Miss Walker.” Anne boasts. “Or do I need to remind you?”

“Mmmm. Mmm-hmm,” Ann agrees. She clenches her eyes shut, now slipping up and down on Anne’s fingers in a steady rhythm. “Remind me,” she exhales.

Anne clicks her tongue in faux disapproval. “You’re going to be so sore tomorrow, Miss Walker,” Anne says, while simultaneously extending her pointer finger so that it joins the middle two. Ann groans when she feels them stretch her, groans again when she sees the muscles in Anne’s forearms tense.

“As always, Miss Walker, you feel absolutely divine.”

“Oh god,” Ann breathes.

“You’re so tight, Miss Walker.”

Ann can only moan in response. She feels heat drip out of her.

“You’re making me so wet.”

And before she can stop herself, Ann begs, “Lemme feel.”

Anne looks surprised but within a second or two she’s grinning when she feels Ann’s hands reach down to her trousers. Ann unbuttons, unzips her and lifts off of Anne’s lap just long enough to spread the top of her pants apart and wedge her hand down into the cramped space between them. She can’t make out what’s on Anne’s boxer-briefs today but she doesn’t care because by the time she’s lowered her hand far enough, it’s clear that Anne has soaked through them.

“I told you,” Anne gloats, but she barely gets the words out before Ann is slamming back down onto her hand and pressing her lips into Anne’s. She opens her mouth, hungrily finds Anne’s tongue with her own and resumes a frantic pace, thrusting onto Anne’s fingers. She fucks herself against Anne’s hand, against Anne’s warm skin, and Anne lowers her other hand down to rub circles — slow, steady circles — around Ann’s clit.

“Baby, I’m—” Ann exhales. And Anne just keeps smiling, rubbing circles with one thumb, curling the fingers of her other hand so the fingers inside Ann press against her walls. Ann starts to curve her back, twitch and spasm, and Anne just keeps smiling. Ann opens her eyes and kisses Anne more; she presses against her mouth, sloppily tonguing at her and nibbling on her lips, until Anne arrests all her movements and says,

“No, Miss Walker. You’ll come when I say you can come.”

“Fuuu—” Ann stammers out in response.

“Yes, Miss Walker. You’re going to be obedient for me, aren’t you?”

Ann whimpers. She’s stopped trying to kiss her and instead just leaning her face into Anne’s cheek.

“Mmm-hmm,” Ann answers, but she knows neither of them believe it.

“Ride my fingers, Miss Walker.”

Ann starts to thrash around in Anne’s lap. She can feel herself pulse against Anne’s fingers. Feel herself continue to drip on Anne’s skin. She won’t last like this.

“Anne, fuck, I’m —”

“Miss Walker, you should know by now that you need my permission to come.”

“Please,” Ann begs.

“Not yet,” Anne denies her. But then Ann is clenching around Anne’s long fingers. Her breathing pattern shifts, inhales and exhales made up of short and choppy breaths and then Ann is dropping her head into Anne’s body and curling her back more and shaking as she sits down on Anne’s hand one last time. Anne flexes her fingers and presses them against Ann’s walls and the sensation causes Ann to whimper, and Ann throws her hand down to Anne’s to stop her from moving anymore, to slowly release her sopping fingers from Ann’s hole which she’s just fucked raw.

Ann catches her breath and stretches her neck, pulling away from where she’d nestled against her body. “Fuck,” she says to herself, and immediately she starts laughing.

Anne wipes her hand on the fabric of her boxers which is still exposed.

“What’s so funny?” Anne asks, chuckling a little already herself.

“Of all the expectations I’m going to fail to meet in my life, this one is my favorite,” Ann answers from behind a coy smile. Anne kisses her sweetly, and Ann thinks to herself that it will never get old watching Anne go from dominant cock-tease to gentle and dutiful in 3 seconds flat.

“You fail at it so spectacularly, babe.”

***

A half hour later, Anne and Ann still sit in the parked car, though now the windows are rolled down and neither of them can stop laughing.

“Oh, we’ve done way worse, Ann. This was totally hidden.”

Ann throws her arms out to hit Anne across the torso - well, she tries. Anne catches her hands and pulls her in toward her body again.

“The bathroom that one time.” Anne offers. “And I think there was an alley way with you drunk and on your knees? Or was I on mine?”

“Probably both of us,” Ann replies casually, as if either of them being on their knees, pleasuring the other with their tongues in an alleyway, was as American as Saturday morning cartoons. Her eyes show how pleased she is with this admission, and it’s then that they both realize they’re equally proud of their sexcapades. Equally proud of what they bring out in the other. Equally proud of what they can get the other _to do_. And then all of a sudden, Ann sees the sad longing behind Anne’s eyes again.

“Ann, I know I’m not good at always being able to express— to tell you where my emotions are and—” Anne readjusts in her seat and tucks her hair behind her ears. “Well I just need you to know that you— that we—”

Ann leans back over the seat and puts her fingers over Anne’s lips to sshh her. “I know, Anne,” she says. “Anne, I love you. I’m _in_ love with you. I have been, always; you know that, right?”

Anne nods her head.

“All I want to know is that you’re not going anywhere,” Ann says softly.

“I’m not going anywhere Ann.”

Ann looks down at her own lap and smiles. Relief washes over her. She knows— Anne tells her all the time, but still — hearing Anne say it outloud practically reduces her to putty. She looks up at the woman across from her in the driver’s seat through hungry eyes.

“Was this a terrible way to spend your birthday?”

“Not in the least, baby,” Anne says.

**

They sit, two twenty-somethings in the front seat of Anne’s car, Ann tracing her fingers over the plastic wrap covering the new tattoo on Anne’s shoulder. The two Ann(e)s — a bartender with fresh laceflower on her body like a garden sprouting in the early days of spring, and the girl who walked into her bar all those months ago— with vines, peony, lavender across her back and ribs and hip. That girl now with her own black ribbon on the soft skin of her arm.

Anne turns on the car to drive them home. They watch the headlights dance on the streets in front of them as they drive, Ann quiet, enjoying that perfect soreness, itchiness of fresh ink having been blazed into her skin. And for the very first time, Anne feels it too.

FIN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’d just like to take a moment to apologize for the following:  
\- My excessive use of the comma.  
\- The egregious delay between all the chapters after about chapter 6.  
\- The historical inaccuracy of Anne using toys, Ann having tattoos, Anne being afraid of needles (?) and Anne being a fuckboi— oh wait.
> 
> Thank you for all your lovely words of encouragement and hilarious commentary. I fell in love with these two idiots too and am truly only sorry for not having more time to devote to them over the past months. Thanks for being patient with this story and with me as a first-time poster. Hopefully this brightened up your quarantine just a bit!!
> 
> HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANNE LISTER!!


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